A 26-year-old Kuwaiti man was slapped with a 10-year prison sentence Monday after he was convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on Twitter.
Hamad al-Naqi, a Shiite Muslim, pleaded innocent, saying the tweets were the work of a hacker. His lawyer, who has vowed to appeal, argued that even had Naqi been responsible for the tweets, he would have been guilty of a “crime of opinion,” not a threat to national security, for which he received the maximum sentence.
Naqi has become the target of protests and was attacked in jail, Reuters reports. The civil plaintiff said the verdict would serve as a “deterrent.“
