Qatar, Arab Spring sponsor, jails poet for life

[Bosonic]

Source: Reuters

A court in Qatar, which has supported Arab uprisings abroad, jailed a local poet for life on Thursday for criticizing the emir and inciting revolt - a sentence that drew outrage and cries of hypocrisy from human rights groups.

In his verses, Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami praised the Arab Spring revolts that toppled four dictators, often with the help of money and other support from the tiny, energy-rich Gulf state. But he also criticized Qatar's own absolute monarch and spoke, for example, of "sheikhs playing on their Playstations".

"This is a tremendous miscarriage of justice," said defence lawyer Nagib al-Naimi, who conveyed the verdict to Reuters after a trial held behind closed doors in the capital Doha.

At the prison where he has been held for a year, Ajami, 36, later told Reuters he believed the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to be "a good man" who must be unaware of his plight. Lawyer Naimi said the defence would appeal. A royal pardon may also be a possibility.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/29/us-qatar-poet-court-idUSBRE8AS11320121129

[leftlibdem420]

1. Another argument FOR the death penalty.

Eliminating all the FIFA representatives who awarded these fascist, queer-bashing fucks the World Cup.

[msongs]

2. doing the same thing the Emir does is positive in what way exactly? nt

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. This is the guy supporting the rebels in Syria.

Glorious democratic revolutions for you, but not here at home. The stench of hypocrisy hovers.

[Alamuti Lotus]

4. the Wahhabist dictator of Qatar is not an "Arab Spring" sponsor..

and I hate using that phrase, it's just some Madison Ave coinage to sell the concept to the gullible, but that's neither here nor there. In all of those countries where one US-friendly dictatorship was replaced with another, the Qatari dictatorship has sponsored the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an organization that has been working with American agencies to suppress and hijack actual progressive revolutionaries in the region for more than 50 years. What goes on today is nothing more than business as usual and this dictator in question (a close US ally) is a major part of keeping it that way. The injustice in question is par for the course, and it's really tragic naivety (possibly strategically so) to think "maybe the guy at the top just isn't aware"..