Overview
- Press freedom advocates, who went public Tuesday, say Shihab-Eldin has been held for nearly six weeks and call for his immediate release.
- The journalist, who was visiting family, stopped posting March 2 after resharing a CNN-verified video of a U.S. fighter jet crash near a Kuwaiti air base.
- Advocates report charges of spreading false information, harming national security and misusing a phone, while authorities have not given a detailed public account.
- Kuwait tightened controls as the Iran war began, with a March 2 Interior Ministry warning against filming strike sites and a March 15 law allowing up to 10 years in prison for reports tied to military entities.
- A U.S. State Department spokesperson says the government is aware of reports of an American detained in Kuwait, as rights groups cite wider Gulf arrests over war-related posts and note his social accounts now appear deactivated.