Kuwait Man Gets 2 Years for Tweet Insulting Emir

Country is cracking down on social media
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 7, 2013 2:02 AM CST
Kuwait Man Gets 2 Years for Tweet Insulting Emir
Negative tweets about this man can get you locked up in Kuwait.   (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

A Kuwaiti man will spend the next two years of his life in prison over a tweet, as the Gulf nation continues its crackdown on dissent in social media. The man, who has 5,700 Twitter followers, received a 2-year sentence for a tweet deemed to have "stabbed the rights and powers" of the country's ruler, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Saba, Reuters reports. Small-scale demonstrations on local issues are tolerated in Kuwait, but the country has so far avoided Arab-Spring style mass unrest. (More Kuwait stories.)

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