Innocent until proven guilty – ‘Not here to harm interests’
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Writing to harm the interests or the reputation of others is not my objective, but sometimes some people do not like what I write or believe that I want to harm them and resort to the judiciary which is their right.
When I look back 2016 for me was exceptional in quality and the number of lawsuits filed against me and the accompanying ‘not guilty’ verdict in all cases including the one that was filed by a doctor who is the son of a well-known writer member of a party because in my writing I objected to his appointment as consultant for a local health committee while he was on long ‘study leave’.
He was appointed consultant so he could benefit from the accompanying healthy privileges as member of the committee in spite of the fact that he is not a consultant and was not in a position to take part in the committee meetings because he was on scholarship, but it was a pure case of short sight and damned interests.
In a second case, a complaint was filed by a former MP who through his influence at the time had succeeded to force his way and become president of the Scout Association in the Ministry of Education.
It is a well-known fact that the role of an MP is to monitor the government and hold ministers accountable but instead he was appointed as an employee and drew a monthly salary.
He did not like what was written about this situation and obtained a licence from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to establish a Non-Government Organization under the name ‘Scout Union of Arab Parliamentarians’ and went on to become its president and continued to hold that title even after he failed to secure a seat in the Parliament.
He continued to be the president of this NGO even after the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Al-Subaih cancelled the license of this union, or his association, and this was another scandal, so he filed a lawsuit and lost it.
The third case was filed by the heirs of a well-known politician because we objected in writing to naming after him one of the most important streets in Kuwait. We said the deceased did not deserve this ‘honor’.
The Cassation Court also ruled in my favor in a State Security case filed by the Iranian government under the pretext I had insulted the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini in one of my articles.
Despite final court rulings, it so happened that I needed a clean criminal record certificate to establish a new company, but when I checked with the Criminal Evidences Department, I found that I must have exoneration certificate through the Department of Interrogation and this is what I did the next day.
I thought it would be an easy job but it took three weeks and five visits to a number of departments in the Interior Ministry before I got a ‘no-crimes’ certificate.
I was surprised today that all these lawsuits would remain in the records of the ministry forever but for the ruling issued on June 14, 2017 which obliged the Ministry of Interior to remove the cases from its records after the defendants received ‘exoneration’.
The court responded to the Ministry of the Interior view that the names should be kept for the history of the accused in Kuwait by stating that keeping the cases in the Ministry’s records runs contrary to exoneration and its reality on the ground.
Therefore, it cannot be said that the accused has been exonerated as long as the lawsuits are not deleted from the ministry computer otherwise the exoneration (innocence) would be meaningless. This means the Ministry of Interior is creating something that is not done through legislation.
Here, we hope the Interior Ministry will speed up compliance to the court ruling and remove the names of all those who have been proven innocent through final court verdicts and I am one of those ‘innocent’ persons.
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By Ahmad Al-Sarraf
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