By Canadian Press

Kuwait executes 5 prisoners, including a man convicted in 2015 Islamic State-claimed mosque bombing

Jul 27, 2023 | 2:02 AM

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Kuwait said Thursday it executed five prisoners, including an inmate convicted over the bombing of a Shiite mosque in 2015 that killed 27 people and was claimed by the Islamic State group.

The inmates were hanged at the Central Prison, Kuwait’s Public Prosecution said in a statement. Prosecutors said the five include the mosque attacker, three people convicted of murder and a convicted drug dealer.

One of the convicted murderers was Egyptian, another was Kuwaiti, and the convicted drug dealer was from Sri Lanka. The statement didn’t provide the nationality of the mosque attacker or the third convicted murderer, saying only that they were in Kuwait unlawfully.

The 2015 bombing occurred during midday Friday prayers inside one of Kuwait’s oldest Shiite mosques. The Islamic State group, which at the time controlled large areas in both Syria and Iraq, claimed the attack. The Sunni extremist group views Shiites as apostates deserving of death.

It was the first militant attack in Kuwait, a small oil-rich country, in more than two decades. The attack was likely intended to foment unrest between Kuwait’s Sunni and Shiite populations, but instead it backfired, reawakening a sense of national solidarity not seen since Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion.

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The extremist group no longer controls any territory following a grueling military campaign by an array of forces, but continues to carry out sporadic attacks in Syria and Iraq. It also boasts affiliates in several Asian and African countries.

Executions are relatively rare in Kuwait, which put seven inmates to death last November. Before that, the last one was in 2017, when it executed seven prisoners, including a ruling family member.

Nick El Hajj, The Associated Press