KUWAIT CITY, Oct 28: The Court of Appeals acquitted eight suspects – two of them tried in absentia – in the Camp Arifjan bomb plot case, including the son of a former lawmaker, but upheld the decision of a lower court, which had previously sentenced nine other suspects to three months in jail with hard labor.
The Court of First Instance had earlier affirmed the innocence of eight suspects, who presented medical reports proving that they were tortured and forced to admit the charges. The Court of Appeals later upheld the verdict and declared the suspects not guilty.

According to the lawyers of the suspects, their clients are loyal to Kuwait and HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah; hence, they will not do anything to harm the nation. They added their clients respect the laws of the land and will not tarnish the image of Kuwait.

On the other hand, the court found nine other suspects guilty of joining training programs on how to use firearms with the intention of attacking allied forces in Afghanistan; thereby, posing a grave threat to the harmonious relations between the two nations.

“The appeals court today confirmed the acquittal issued by the criminal court in May against all the defendants,” defence lawyer Adel Abdulhadi told AFP.

He said the defence team was considering suing the interior ministry for damages as the court had also upheld the lower court’s ruling that the men had been tortured by the Gulf state’s security service.
Five of the men were arrested in August last year while a sixth suspect is already serving a life sentence for a 2002 attack on the US military in Kuwait that killed an American soldier.

The other five defendants were released after their acquittal by the lower court on May 10.
The two men acquitted in absentia are Mohsen al-Fadhli, who has been wanted by Kuwaiti security forces for the past five years, and Mohammad al-Dossari, who is on trial in Lebanon on terrorism charges.

The trial had focussed on an alleged plot to attack the US military base at Arifjan, 70 kms (45 miles) south of Kuwait City, the largest US military facility in Kuwait and home to thousands of troops.
The accused said that purported confessions presented to the court had been extracted under torture.
The prosecution can still take the case to Kuwait’s highest court but Abdulhadi said he thought that unlikely.

Meanwhile, the Court of Appeals sentenced seven of the 11 suspects, who had been accused of participating in ‘jihad’ (holy war) in Afghanistan, to three years in jail with hard labor but acquitted the remaining four suspects.

Case files indicate the seven suspects encouraged the four others to engage in ‘jihad’ activities.  One of them is said to have shown videos of these activities, participants in other countries and fighting techniques to persuade four gullible men to carry out terrorist acts in Afghanistan. He also provided them with audio recordings of lectures on various ‘jihad’ activities.