| A cleric was questioned for a few hours on Tuesday before being freed without bail on charges that he had called for jihad, against US forces in Iraq, his lawyer said. Sheikh Hamed Al Ali, former secretary general of the hardline Salaf Movement, was interrogated after a few radical suspects, detained on charges of recruiting fighters for Iraq, claimed he had encouraged them. "We told the prosecutors that confessions of the suspects were taken under duress by state security agents. We demanded an investigation into the issue," lawyer Abdulrahman Al Rasheedi said in a statement. In June, the criminal court handed Sheikh Hamed a two-year suspended sentence and a $3,400 fine for publicly opposing the country's support for the US-led war on Iraq last year. Kuwaiti security forces arrested some 16 suspects in a crackdown last month on a group of radicals for allegedly recruiting fighters for Iraq. Five of the suspects have been released on bail. Four more, including the spokesman of the Association of Victims of Torture and Arbitrary Arrest, Khaled Al Dossari, remain at large. |