Kuwait court upholds death for alleged spy cell member
Kuwait’s court of appeals has upheld the death sentence for a citizen allegedly convicted of “spying for Iran” as part of a cell accused of trying to destabilize the Persian Gulf country.
A lower court had handed down the death sentence to Hasan Abdulhadi Ali in January over allegations of recruiting Kuwaiti nationals and arranging for their travel to Lebanon to receive training from Hezbollah resistance movement.
The court claimed that Ali had reached out to an Iranian diplomat in Kuwait City and later traveled to the Islamic Republic seeking to smuggle large quantities of arms and explosives into Kuwait.
On Thursday, the court of appeals claimed that Ali has been a Hezbollah member since 1996. He was found guilty of being “the mastermind of the cell” of 26 members, among them an Iranian, who had been accused of plotting “hostile acts” in Kuwait and possessing weapons.
The Iranian had also been sentenced to death by a lower court in January. However, the appeals court did not look into his case on Thursday as he is said to be on the run.
The case of the two Kuwaiti fugitives, who had been given jail terms by the lower court, was further set aside until they appear in court.
Additionally, the appeals court confirmed a life term against another member of the cell, while five others were sentenced to between two and five years imprisonment.
Five other defendants were fined 5,000 Kuwaiti dinars (USD 16,600 each), while the rest were all acquitted.
The verdicts by the appeals court can still be appealed before the Supreme Court.
In a statement released last September, the Iranian embassy in Kuwait dismissed the accusations linking Tehran to the terror cell, saying a “systematic” campaign is underway to harm relations between neighboring states.
The Iranian diplomatic mission further expressed its “deep sorrow over the mentioning of Iran in an internal case in Kuwait that is basically related to the discovery of weapons and ammunition.”
At the time, Iran’s then deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, also dismissed as completely baseless the allegations leveled in Kuwait against the Islamic Republic.
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