After a sentence of one year imprisonment .. Nasser Al-Duwailah surrenders himself to the Kuwaiti authorities

Al-Jazeera Net - Kuwait

"To address the issues of public affairs, a tax ... and now I pay it." With these words, former Kuwaiti National Assembly member Nasser Al-Duwailah anticipated his surrender to the authorities of his country, in implementation of a ruling issued with a year in prison with work and enforcement.

The Kuwaiti Court of Appeal upheld the first degree ruling against Al-Duwailah, and the judge imprisoned him for a year on charges of launching media campaigns on social media against Saudi Arabia, and misusing the phone, while he was acquitted of the charge of insulting his country's relations with the Kingdom.

Prior to the handover of Al-Duwailah himself, Al-Jazeera Net met him, where he explained the march of more than a year of litigation against the backdrop of the lawsuit filed by the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry based on a complaint from the Saudi ambassador to the country, following a famous tweet by Al-Duwailah entitled "I refuse you, Shakira".

Exploit a tweet

Al-Duwailah explains that the Saudi ambassador's complaint included his, that is, Al-Duwailah, in the tweet publishing coordinates of the concert site of the Colombian singer Shakira, and continues, "While all I did was I commented on a tweet of a person named Nasser Al-Qahtani, announcing the ceremony in which he mentioned that the city of Abha Saudi Arabia She will embrace him, and attach his coordinates, so I commented to the singer, saying, "Leave me, Shakira, which is an expression among the Gulfs that means run away."

What is more strange, says Al-Duwailah, is that there is no Shakira party in Saudi Arabia at all, while the coordinates were for a location in the Atlantic Ocean, and it has nothing to do with the Kingdom !! Consequently, this tweet does not represent a crime or prejudice in relation to a sister country, but only was used as a reason for Nasser Al-Duwailah to be brought to trial, according to his description.

And he went on to say that the court concluded in its ruling that the tweet constituted intimidation of the safe population, indicating that he defended himself that Al-Houthi was the one who terrorized the safe in Saudi Arabia over six years, and that the Houthis set 300 goals that were confined between military and economic, and not including any parties, it is not It is in their interest to target the parties, he said.

Shakira's tweet was one of the six tweets of the state that he broadcasted over 11 days, in which the court saw media campaigns against Saudi Arabia, and here the state adds that “these tweets are not totally related to any hostile act, as I was dealing with general issues related to freedom of opinion And expression, without prejudice to Saudi Arabia. "

He explains that media campaigns, as everyone understands them, are broadcasting simultaneous and intensive messages through more than one means of social media such as "Twitter", "Facebook", "YouTube" and others, to form a momentum that amounts to describing the media campaign, and shows: "No more My tweets include what the Saudi press publishes about the dates of the concerts, their locations and photos.

Illegal dimensions

Al-Duwailah says that among the tweets that were used against him, one criticized the fact that the party responsible for parties in Saudi Arabia published a schedule of concerts and locations of night clubs in "Google Maps", and said, "While your children dance in discos, our Kuwaiti children fight in the southern border as partners in good and bad times." Either you are in a battle and a challenge, or you are in a party, but the combination of the battle and the party is not equal at the same time, "explaining that his words made the Saudis worse.

He continued, "Political work always has dimensions other than the legal dimensions," explaining that the Public Prosecution office investigated him at the beginning of the case about the content of only one tweet "Shakira's tweet," but he was surprised during the trial with a file containing 90 tweets that he had obtained a patent in Issues based on some of them, while others have nothing to do with the issue, or even Saudi Arabia.

"We are subject to the state and subject to the judiciary," he said, explaining that his next step would be to challenge the ruling before the Court of Cassation, which is the last level of litigation according to the Kuwaiti judicial system, stressing that "what the court will judge will I implement, this is an honor for me, as countries confront me and I am an individual ".

Al-Duwailah believes that the timing of the court’s decision cannot be viewed in isolation from what happened with his brother Mubarak Al-Duwailah recently, as the investigation authorities referred him to the Public Prosecution after a leak that spread to him with the late Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, and the repercussions that he suffered.

Al-Duwailah expressed that he has no doubt that the entire region is dominated by a strong current, a movement that stands against the Islamic trend and against its symbols.

The verdict issued against Al-Duwailah echoed on the social networking site "Twitter", by showing many Kuwaitis and Arabs their sympathy with him, while his share of the Saudi expatriates gloated, although not a few of them expressed joy in the ruling, but they criticized him in that he did not condemn the state Directly to offend Saudi Arabia, they said.