Amnesty International — Kuwait 2024: prosecution of Bidun activist Mohammad al-Bargash, prison sentences for critics, denaturalisation decrees and prosecutions of politicians after the May 2024 suspension of parliament

Amnesty reports that in the first six months of 2024 at least seven people were imprisoned for publicly voicing their views, at least nine were stripped of nationality, and a parliamentary candidate was prosecuted for criticising the system of government.

SENTENCES.
- Anwar Hayati: on 25 January 2024, four years under the State Security Law for seven posts on X that authorities considered insulting to the Amir and to Saudi Arabia. The posts alleged theft of public money by the royal family and mentioned an attack on Kuwait from Saudi territory in 1920. Amnesty says his lawyer was refused the indictment and case file. He had left Kuwait in September 2023, after a summons following a State Security complaint, and lives in exile in Europe.
- Mohammad al-Bargash: on 31 January 2024, three years for criticising policy towards the Bidun. Amnesty considers him a prisoner of conscience.
- Abdullah Fairouz and Fuhaid al-Ajami (editor of the media venture TfTeeeSH): on 19 February 2024, five years each in a "state security case" over a 2022 interview in which Fairouz alleged that the Ministry of Interior worked with an Israeli company. Fairouz, whose father is Kuwaiti and mother Egyptian, was ordered deported on release; he had been imprisoned from 4 November 2013 to 22 September 2021 for comments about the Amir. On appeal al-Ajami's conviction was reversed (released in early June after three months), and Fairouz's sentence was reduced to three years.

DENATURALISATION. Three 2024 decrees stripped at least nine men of nationality, together with the wives and children of four of them. No reasons were given. At least one had criticised Gulf governments online, and at least three appear to have been naturalised within the previous two decades.

POLITICIANS. Since the Amir's order of 10 May 2024 dissolving the National Assembly and suspending constitutional articles requiring an elected legislature (for up to four years), five politicians had been prosecuted for criticising the system of governance. They include candidate Mesaed al-Quraifah, sentenced on 22 May 2024 to four years for an electoral speech criticising the government and the Al Sabah family's role in politics. Amnesty notes this is the third suspension of parliamentary government, after 1976–1981 and 1986–1992.

USE IN A REPORT: the two statements date the start of the pattern of prosecutions and denaturalisations that later entries on the Dossier (2026) document at larger scale. They give the offences charged (State Security Law, false news abroad) and the sentences. For a Bidun claimant, the al-Bargash case shows prosecution for speaking to foreign media about the Bidun's situation.

The al-Bargash case appears in both statements: the January statement gives the arrest, the charge and the first-instance acquittal, and the June statement the three-year sentence on appeal. Read together, they give the full course of the case to mid-2024. Whether any sentence has since been served, pardoned or quashed is not recorded here and should be checked before a report relies on it. Amnesty's figure of "at least nine" denaturalisations in the first half of 2024 predates the large-scale withdrawals that followed. The later entries on the Dossier, from GCHR (2026) and the nationality entry, record the scale reached afterwards.

On 3 September 2023, State Security Agency officers in plain clothes and without an arrest warrant detained Mohammad al-Bargash at his workplace, an electronics shop in al-Sulaibiya (al-Jahra governorate). He was accused of "spreading false news and rumors abroad" that would "undermine the country's prestige and standing", after an interview about the Bidun with Nabaa TV, "a Saudi opposition channel broadcasting from Lebanon". He was held for more than seven weeks and released when a trial court acquitted him on 25 October 2023. The prosecution appealed, and the appeal verdict was expected on 31 January 2024. He faced three to fifteen years, possibly more because of a previous conviction: for a peaceful Bidun rights demonstration in Taima on 26 August 2022 he received a KD 200 fine and a suspended one-year sentence, one of 21 defendants fined.

Amnesty puts the Bidun at "around 100,000". It says the government denies Bidun children free government schooling and does not provide healthcare on equal terms, in breach of ICERD, the CRC and the ICESCR. It calls for the charges to be quashed.