Qatar: Poet’s 15-year sentence upheld


Issue 957 - 31 Oct 2013 | 1 minute read

On 21 October, Qatar’s highest court upheld a 15-year prison sentence for Mohammed Al-Ajami, a poet arrested in 2011 and charged with insulting the emir and inciting to overthrow the ruling system (GSN 942/10, 937/6, 935/9). Al-Ajami, also known as Ibn Al-Dheeb, was initially sentenced to life for his outspokenness, but had his sentenced reduced by the appeals court. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, his only hope of release is an emiri pardon. According to Amnesty International, charges were brought in relation to a poem Al-Ajami composed in August 2010, while he was studying Arabic literature in Cairo. 


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