Qatari Poet Sentenced for ‘Threatening to Overthrow the Regime’ Loses Final Appeal - Global Voices

25.10.13

Qatari Poet Sentenced for ‘Threatening to Overthrow the Regime’ Loses Final Appeal - Global Voices: Qatar's Court of Cassation, the country's highest judicial body, upheld a 15-year prison sentence earlier this week for poet Muhammad Rashid al-Ajami, who goes by the poetic name Muhammad Ibn al-Dheeb.

The Qatari citizen had been seeking a retrial after he was first convicted by a lower court last year of “inciting the overthrow of the regime” with his poetry and given a life sentence, which was then reduced by the Appeals Court in February to 15 years in jail.

“There is no justice,” Ibn al-Dheeb's outspoken lawyer Najeeb al-Nauimi told Qatar-based Doha News. “Our judicial system cannot be trusted.”

International human rights groups have widely condemned the trial of a poet as an attack on freedom of expression.

Reacting to Monday's ruling, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth questioned Qatar's free speech record: