A criminal court yesterday acquitted eight Kuwaitis allegedly linked to al-Qaeda of plotting to attack a key US military base in the emirate, their lawyer said.
“Judge Hisham Abdullah issued the verdict to acquit the six defendants of all charges. They will be released from detention today,” Mohammad al-Kundari said of suspects who had appeared in court.
Five of the men were arrested in August while the sixth suspect is already serving a life term in jail for an 2002 attack on the US military in Kuwait that killed a US soldier.
They were charged with plotting to attack the US military base at Arifjan, 70km south of Kuwait City.
They have categorically denied the charges and claimed their confessions were extracted through torture.
Two other Kuwaitis who were being tried in absentia were also acquitted by the criminal court, Kundari said. The two 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 in connection with terror charges, he said.
“It was an expected ruling,” said Kundari, who along with other defense lawyers argued during the trial that the public prosecution and investigators had failed to provide the court any material evidence.
At the start of the trial in December last year, the prosecution dropped the key conspiracy charge, but pressed other accusations of planning to manufacture explosives and the illegal possession of firearms.
In February, however, a secret service officer told the court that the six defendants plotted to attack the US base in Arifjan in collaboration with the other two suspects.
A US Department of Defense spokesman said last year US forces in Kuwait had been targeted, but that it was unclear if the suspects were linked to al-Qaeda or planned to strike Camp Arifjan.
About 15,000 US soldiers are stationed in Kuwait.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant