{{A Qatari poet sentenced to life in prison for inciting the overthrow of the government and insulting Qatar’s rulers has had his jail term cut.}}<\/p>\n
Mohammed al-Ajami’s sentence was reduced to 15 years, his lawyer said.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court is due to make a final ruling on his sentence within the next 30 days.<\/p>\n
Human rights groups have condemned Mr Ajami’s conviction, saying his trial was marred by irregularities, with court sessions held in secret.<\/p>\n
The case against Mr Ajami is said to be based on a poem he wrote in 2010 which criticised the Emir, Sheikh Hamad al-Thani.<\/p>\n
But activists believe the authorities were angered by a 2011 poem he wrote about authoritarian rule in the region.<\/p>\n
In the poem Tunisian Jasmine, which he recited and then uploaded to the internet in January 2011, Mr Ajami expressed his support for the uprising in the North African state, saying: “We are all Tunisia in the face of the repressive elite.”<\/p>\n
He also denounced “all Arab governments” as “indiscriminate thieves”.<\/p>\n
read more…http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-21572072<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{A Qatari poet sentenced to life in prison for inciting the overthrow of the government and insulting Qatar’s rulers has had his jail term cut.}} Mohammed al-Ajami’s sentence was reduced to 15 years, his lawyer said. The Supreme Court is due to make a final ruling on his sentence within the next 30 days. Human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6138"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6138"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}