Advertisement

Kuwait police: man rearrested after killing woman on bail

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Police in Kuwait rearrested a man who they said fatally stabbed a woman after his release on bail, a case that ignited widespread outrage in the tiny Gulf Arab country on Wednesday.

The man snatched the woman from her car on the highway and brought her to an “unknown destination” where he stabbed her in the heart, the Ministry of Interior announced late Tuesday, without identifying the suspect. Her bleeding body was later found outside a hospital south of Kuwait City.

Authorities said that within hours they apprehended the man, who they reportedly first detained on harassment charges brought by the victim's family.

Footage of the victim’s distraught sister, screaming that she had notified authorities of the menace the man posed, spread like wildfire on social media. “I told you again and again he would kill her, and now she’s dead!” she cries. Before long, the victim’s name, Farah Hamza Akbar, became one of the most popular hashtags on Twitter in the conservative sheikhdom.

Kuwait’s legal code increasingly has come under fire from activists, who say such killings are common in the country despite years of rallying against them. A man who catches his wife or sister committing adultery and kills her, for instance, would face a maximum of three years in prison for what is classified as a misdemeanor.