Cairo: Kuwait prosecutors gave orders for the lawyer who was in prison on the charges of posting tweets considered offensive to figures in the country’s ruling family, said sources.

Abdulaziz Al-Mutawa, a Kuwaiti lawyer, was arrested earlier this week in connection with the allegedly defamatory tweets.

The reports stated that the public prosecution had released the lawyer on bail of KD5,000 over defaming figures in the ruling family on Twitter, the Media Court’s Kuwaiti website.

Al-Mutawa recently tweeted about alleged corruption in Kuwait and chastised the country’s ruling family.

There was one more case in which the Kuwait government arrested eight individuals without any charge since November 4 and have interrogated all of them for several days without allowing them access to a lawyer, making their detention arbitrary.

According to three Kuwaiti human rights activists with direct knowledge of the case, Kuwaiti security forces detained Habib Ghadanfari, Jamal al-Shatti, Khaled al-Baghli, Adel Dashti, Jasem Dashti, Musa al-Masri, Anwar al-Hazim, and Jalal Jamal between November 4 and 6 without presenting warrants for their arrest.

The detainees were held in Kuwait’s Central Prison, awaiting a court hearing on December 15, when their lawyers expected them to be charged collectively. All of the detainees are over the age of 50, and at least two have serious health problems.

“The detention of these eight Kuwaitis without charge for more than a month is a clear violation of their right to a fair trial. They were not only denied access to lawyers during pre-trial detention and interrogations but they were also subjected to ill-treatment, despite the fact that many of them were suffering from serious health issues. Kuwait is failing to meet its obligation under international human rights law to ensure fair trial procedures and prohibit arbitrary detention,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s the Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director.