Saudi Blogger Sent Home to Possible Death Sentence - East Idaho News
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Saudi Blogger Sent Home to Possible Death Sentence

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Getty N 110311 CyberSpy?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1329162253953iStockPhoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — A Saudi blogger wanted for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad on Twitter was returned to Saudi Arabia on Monday where he faces the possibility of a death sentence.

Hamza Kashgari, 23, was en route to New Zealand seeking asylum when he was detained in Kuala Lumpur by Malaysian security officials who said they didn’t want their country to become a safe haven for fugitives.

Kashgari’s offending tweets included a fictitious conversation with the Prophet Muhammad on his birthday last week eliciting more than 30,000 responses in less than 24 hours and several death threats. One of the tweets read “On your birthday, I will not bow to you. I won’t kiss your hands. I will shake hands with you as an equal, and smile at you like you smile at me, and talk to you only as a friend, nothing more,” he wrote.

The Saudi blogger deleted the controversial conversation from Twitter, but he continued to receive death threats and fled the country.

An official Saudi religious body declared him to be an apostate for his writings. Insulting the prophet is considered blasphemous in Islam and is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. For many in the Kingdom deleting the remarks was not enough and the religious conservatives demanded he be tried in a Sharia court.

Numerous human rights groups have made pleas to not send Kashgari back to Saudi.

Amnesty International has warned that Kashgari could be executed in Saudi Arabia if he is found guilty of apostasy.

Local rights group Lawyers for Liberty’s Asia deputy director Phil Robertson said, “If he [Kashgari] faces execution back in Saudi Arabia, the Malaysian government will have blood on its hands.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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