Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Journalist Arrested For Tweet Deported to Saudi Arabia

Posted by timothy on from the welcome-to-most-of-history dept.

New submitter cosmicaug writes with an update to yesterday's report that journalist Hamza Kashgari had been arrested by Malaysian police acting on a request conveyed from the Saudi government via Interpol. Now, says the BBC, "Police confirmed to the BBC that Hamza Kashgari was sent back to Saudi Arabia on Sunday despite protests from human rights groups. Mr Kashgari's controversial tweet last week sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. Insulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam and is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. Mr Kashgari, 23, fled Saudi Arabia last week and was detained upon his arrival in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on Thursday." Writes cosmicaug: "Sadly, the most likely outcome is that they are going to execute this man for three tweets."

7 of 604 comments (clear)

  1. A second just Justice.... Please by del_diablo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As far as I know, most western countries have a policy that states "If a man will be executed upon being sent to a country, you are not allowed to send this man to the country, nor are you allowed to deport him to a country that may deport him to the country in question", or something similar. Disregard the lack of Lawyer shargon, but instead: Why was this rule not followed?

    1. Re:A second just Justice.... Please by icebike · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Malaysia isn't a western country and probably doesn't have that rule.

      Malaysia probably has just the opposite rule, considering The Malaysian constitution states that Islam is the state religion.

      One has to wonder why this guy would flee to any Muslim Majority nation, let alone one with an official "state religion" of Islam.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    2. Re:A second just Justice.... Please by sosume · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Malaysia was responding to an Interpol warrant. The real question is why Interpol cooperates in prosecuting thought crimes. Some heads are going to roll, and not just that of the arrested journalist..

    3. Re:A second just Justice.... Please by timeOday · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Yes, it is somewhat different because none of the following stories will lead to state executions, but it's a little surprising how easily a tweet or something like that can get you imprisoned in the US. It certainly doesn't require any actual violent actions (quoting Glen Greenwald):
      • A Staten Island satellite TV salesman in 2009 was sentenced to five years in federal prison merely for including a Hezbollah TV channel as part of the satellite package he sold to customers;
      • a Massachusetts resident, Tarek Mehanna, is being prosecuted now "for posting pro-jihadist material on the internet";
      • a 24-year-old Pakistani legal resident living in Virginia, Jubair Ahmad, was indicted last September for uploading a 5-minute video to YouTube that was highly critical of U.S. actions in the Muslim world, an allegedly criminal act simply because prosecutors claim he discussed the video in advance with the son of a leader of a designated Terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba);
      • a Saudi Arabian graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, was prosecuted simply for maintaining a website with links "to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel" and "jihadist" sites that solicited donations for extremist groups (he was ultimately acquitted);
      • and last July, a 22-year-old former Penn State student and son of an instructor at the school, Emerson Winfield Begolly, was indicted for - in the FBI's words - "repeatedly using the Internet to promote violent jihad against Americans" by posting comments on a "jihadist" Internet forum including "a comment online that praised the shootings" at a Marine Corps base, action which former Obama lawyer Marty Lederman said "does not at first glance appear to be different from the sort of advocacy of unlawful conduct that is entitled to substantial First Amendment protection."
  2. Moral High Ground by ISoldat53 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The US used to have the moral high ground to protest these sort of things. What a difference a decade makes.

  3. Re:Why does Interpol even acknowledge this?! by mbone · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Interpol's Wikipedia article says that "[i]n order to maintain as politically neutral a role as possible, Interpol's constitution forbids it to undertake any interventions or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature." That, and "[u]ntil the 1980s Interpol did not intervene in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in accordance with Article 3 of its Constitution forbidding intervention in 'political' matters."

    So, Nazi war crimes are political, but insulting the Prophet is not religious. This does not surprise. Interpol's full name is the International Criminal Police Organization; it was called the the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) prior to 1956. Past Presidents of the ICPC include Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Reinhard Heydrich. When Heydrich was planning the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference, he was President of the ICPC. If you think that this background gives me a certain lack of respect for the ICPO, you are correct.

  4. Re:Sure thing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1) Replace coal fired electricity generation with nuclear power
    2) Use the coal now not being burned to produce electricity, to instead produce synthetic liquid fuels (Fischer Tropsch process, etc)
    3) Electricification of transportation (Electric commuter cars, electricified rail transport etc)
    4) Nuclear powered merchant shipping (by this stage ecconomies of scale in step 1 should have driven down the cost of nuclear plant, fuel assembly and spent fuel reprocessing, etc).
    5) Bring our soldiers home as foreign oil becomes increasingly irrelevant...
    6) Reprocess the spent nuclear fuel, vitrify the fission products and bury them in a deep hole, and send the rest of the spent fuel (unfissioned uranium and transuranics like plutonium) back to a reactor for another fuel cycle.
    7) Export advanced nuclear reactor technoloy to the rest of the world $$$
    = Cleaner air in our cities, reduced CO2 emissions, eleminate dependance on foreign oil, stop pissing of other countries by sending our soldiers to their neighbourhood, etc

    But no, instead of doing the above as an ecconomic stimulus, we (the western world) will spend billions/trillions on fighting wars in the mid east to secure our oil supply (money up in smoke?)