Qatari Poet Sentenced To Life In Prison

Qatari Poet Sentenced To Life In Prison
By ALEX DELMAR-MORGAN – 30 November, 2012

DOHA, Qatar—A Qatari poet was sentenced to life in prison on charges of trying to incite the overthrow of the emirate’s ruling family, the poet’s lawyer said, the latest move against dissent amid a crackdown by wealthy Arab Gulf countries.

Qatar’s criminal court on Thursday handed down the sentence to Muhammad ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami, who has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest in November 2011, said the lawyer, Najeeb al-Nuaimi. There was no official confirmation of the poet’s sentencing, and Qatar government officials couldn’t be reached to comment.

Mr. Ajami’s poetry was deemed to be insulting to Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Mr. Nuaimi said he plans to appeal the sentence. He said his client didn’t receive a fair trial, and denied his poetry was offensive to Qatar’s ruler.

Many Gulf Arab governments have sought to clamp down on political dissent in the wake of the Arab Spring protests that unseated leaders across the region. This week, the United Arab Emirates unveiled new laws to prosecute social-media users deemed critical of the government.

While Qatar escaped last year’s wave of pro-democracy protests across the region, since then it has played an outsize role in regional politics by bankrolling and arming uprisings in Libya and Syria.

But the wealthy desert emirate has shown little tolerance for homegrown dissent. Qatar’s legislative body, the Shura Council, approved a new draft media law in June that prohibits the publication of material deemed to be offensive to the ruling family or endangering state security. Violators could face fines of as much as $275,000 if they are found guilty.

Qatar has also refrained from speaking out against its fellow Sunni rulers in Bahrain, who suppressed Shiite-led pro-democracy demonstrations last year with military backing from Saudi Arabia.

Al-Jazeera, Qatar’s government-owned satellite broadcaster, has faced criticism for rarely reporting on Qatar’s domestic affairs while giving expansive coverage supportive of the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Syria.

“This is most awkward for Qatar, which has been embarking on a very public foreign policy, trying to ride the wave of the Arab Spring for its own political capital but yet when problems develop in its own backyard, and you have a dissenting voice, you have the hypocrisy exposed,” said Christopher Davidson, an expert on Middle East politics at Durham University in the U.K.

“Qatar hosts al-Jazeera and the Doha Center for Media Freedom and is really trying to promote itself as a bastion of free expression,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. The life sentence for Mr. Ajami is “completely inconsistent with that,” he said. …more