Sheikh Mazen Al-Jarrah

KUWAIT: The Ministry of Interior's Assistant Undersecretary for Citizenship and Passports Affairs Major General Mazen Al-Jarrah stressed that the ministry has not stopped holding citizens with dual citizenships accountable, and urged anybody with information about such citizens to report to the ministry. Jarrah added that the government is not obliged to grant citizenship to 4,000 bedoons (stateless) annually as the parliament demands. "Citizenship is not a means of public transportation," he said sarcastically, noting that some women of Indian, British, American and other origins had been granted Kuwaiti citizenship, creating what he described as a 'strange social mix.'

MP demands apology

On another concern, and in response to earlier statements made by Jarrah, MP Ali Al-Khamees urged the interior minister to hold Jarrah accountable for describing lawmakers as 'voters' representatives'. "If you are annoyed by the word representatives, we are all representatives in service of the people," the minister replied, but Khamees added that Jarrah uses the word in an insulting manner and that he had a camera in his office to videotape MPs processing people's transactions. "He must apologize," he insisted.

Courts' roundup

The criminal court yesterday acquitted former MP Nasser Al-Duwailah and media figure Talal Al-Saeed in a case filed against them jointly over charges of slandering Egypt. Separately, the criminal court yesterday sentenced citizen Abbas Ghloum, also known as Abbas Al-Shaabi, and another person to one year in prison with labor for taking part in an unlicensed rally and refusing security instructions to leave the place.

IS sympathizer

The suspect currently on trial for deliberately running over security men at a checkpoint during the national anniversary celebrations yesterday repeated his confessions before the court, confirming that he had prepared for his crime. "Yes, I ran them over, attempted to kill them and prepared for what I did," he said. Notably, a policeman was killed, four others injured and one stabbed when the suspect, who admitted to be an IS sympathizer, drove his vehicle into a checkpoint and stabbed a policeman after being arrested.

Also yesterday, the public prosecutor yesterday referred the state security case filed against MP Abdulhameed Dashti over charges of slandering Saudi Arabia to the criminal court, which set May 18 to hear it. Notably, the public prosecutor had issued an order in absentia to detain Dashti for 10 days at the central prison.

In other news, the court of misdemeanor yesterday fined former MP Faisal Al-Mislem KD 150 for slandering Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed on his Twitter account. The same court meanwhile seconded an earlier verdict to fine Sheikh Khalifa Al-Ali KD 1,000 in a case filed against him by retired Lieutenant General Abdul Fattah Al-Ali for insulting him.

By A Saleh