20 June 2005 :
Kuwait’s public prosecutor demanded the death penalty for 34 of 37 militants suspected of links to Al Qaeda and deadly clashes with police in January 2005.The request for the death sentences against 34 militants, including a woman, came in the charge-sheet, a copy of which was seen by reporters. The charges include joining an illegal extremist group, the Peninsula Lions Brigade, reportedly linked with the Saudi Al Haramain Brigades and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. They are also charged with carrying out terrorist acts, participating in the killing of several policemen and plotting to attack US forces and citizens in the country.
The trial, which opened on May 24, resumed amid tight security. One of 11 men initially tried in absentia, Nuri Mutashar Mudallal, turned himself in during the hearing. Meanwhile, eight of more than 20 defendants accused of joining a terrorist group that allegedly planned to attack American troops and Kuwaiti security officers told their trial that interrogators intimidated them into making false confessions by showing them their badly tortured ringleader and threatening to harm members of their families. Twenty-one men and one woman pleaded innocent when the trial opened in May. They were also accused of killing policemen in an unprecedented series of deadly clashes in 2005 in Kuwait. The gang’s alleged ringleader, Amer Al Enezi, was captured in one of the clashes in January and died in hospital.