Kuwait Sentences Prominent Opposition Leader To Five Years In Prison

Fida-AlaeddinMusallam el-Barrak,a leading opposition politician and a former member of Parliament, has been sentenced to five years in prison for comments he made during a speech at a political rally in October. The conviction has sent a chilling message to those who oppose the autocratic rule of the ruling family. By Western standards, el-Barrak’s criticism was remarkably subdued. In the speech, el-Barrak repeated a phrase that would become a slogan of the protest movement — “We will not allow you” — and warned the ruler about “practicing autocracy.”


The comments of el-Barrak were viewed as a positive development that perhaps the royal family would tolerate a small modicum of free speech. That proved wrong and el-Barrak was arrested soon after his speech.

It is good to see how our military intervention and support has yielded yet another abuse regime in this area.

Source: NY Times

15 thoughts on “Kuwait Sentences Prominent Opposition Leader To Five Years In Prison”

  1. We need to recognize that some territories on earth are not civilized and not civilized nations. Some territories are Pirate Territories. Yeah, yeah, BarkinDog, all this apCray about Pirates, bla bla. Laugh. But go travel to some of these places and try it by small sailboat off the coast of Yemen, Somalia, Egypt, and put your closed ears to the ground and listen to what is going on. There are water pirates and land pirates. Mostly they rape, pillage, kills, kidnap and plunder for the money. Sometimes they do all of those things for political reasons or reasons justified by religion. What better description of Yemen than Pirate Territory? Is Kuwait just “somewhat a pirate territory”? Twenty years ago we had nomenclature such as “Third World Countries”. Now, any territory with a tenthead seated at the UN is deemed an equal civilized nation state. Wrong.

  2. Mike,

    The only reason that we liberated Kuwait was because the Bush family has actual property interests ….. Seriously….

  3. We saved these people fro Saddam because……. Oh yea he was a tyrant.

  4. Our government rudely objects to Venesuela’s apparently legitimate presidential election, illegally interfering with the sovereignty of the country. And then there is Kuwait….. where interference might be appropriate but unlikely to occur.

  5. Ironic, I thought we fought the first Iraq war to “free” Kuwait. I guess freedom had a lot of qualifiers. Of course, that particular war was about oil and pretty much nothing else. We were told to rally behind the presidents, troops, apple pie and dare not dissent or be considered unpatriotic.

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