Kuwait to deport Mughniyah's mourners: report

KUWAIT CITY (AFP)

The Gulf state of Kuwait plans to deport foreigners who took part in a rally last month to mourn slain Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah, the interior minister said on Sunday.

"We will deport any foreigner who took part in the mourning rally. This is a decision we will implement and we will not back down," Sheikh Jaber Khaled al-Sabah told Al-Watan newspaper.

He did not say how many people will be deported or if the ministry has begun rounding up suspects.

The rally, in which hundreds of Shiite activists including Kuwaitis, Bahrainis, Lebanese and Iranians took part, caused uproar because Mughniyah was accused of hijacking a Kuwaiti plane two decades ago.

Reactions to the protest have taken a sectarian turn in Kuwait, where a third of the native population of one million are Shiite.

Two Kuwaiti lawmakers, Adnan Abdulsamad and Ahmad Lari, and a number of leading Shiite activists are being sued by four lawyers and the interior minister in connection with the protest.

Three leading activists have been remanded in custody and are being questioned on suspicion of belonging to Hezbollah Kuwait, a previously unknown organization.

The prosecution service also plans to interrogate others including former MPs and a member in the municipal council on the same charges.

Abdulsamad and Lari cannot be interrogated unless parliament strips them of their immunity, however.

Mughniyah, who was killed last month by a car bomb in Damascus, was described at the rally as a "martyr hero," but Kuwait says he was responsible for killing two Kuwaiti passengers on a hijacked plane in 1988.