KUWAIT CITY, July 10: The Court of Appeals acquitted a woman who had been charged with verbally abusing her son’s wife via WhatsApp, citing that the daughter-in-law provoked her by portraying herself as the victim. The Public Prosecution had charged the defendant with insulting her son’s wife, as stated in the documents, without prior provocation, and that she deliberately misused a smartphone to commit the offense above. Upon reviewing the evidence contained within the storage unit, the court concluded in its ruling that the victim had paid the defendant to provoke her to portray herself as the victim. Initially, the victim compiled a list of prohibitions and sent it to the accused, who is in her sixties and was teaching her how to prepare milk for her grandson.

She proceeded to record a video clip of the call, knowing that the words she used while speaking to her husband’s mother were not appropriate for a woman who was the wife of her son, without taking into account her age, her relationship with her son, or even her husband. In that conversation, she provocatively said to her, “Yalla, Yalla” as if addressing a young girl rather than an elderly woman.

Instead, in the recorded clip, she appears indifferent, asserting her authority despite being more than a quarter of a century younger than the suspect, indicating that she alone decides whether to continue the conversation. Considering these provocations, the court decided not to hold the defendant accountable for sending the phrase “you are impolite” or for uttering the phrase “you animal” to the victim who provoked her into saying those phrases. The defendant was represented by Lawyer Abdul Mohsen Al-Qattan, who highlighted the maliciousness behind the accusation, and the delay in reporting.

He explained that during questioning about the incident, the complainant had to clarify inconsistencies in her report. When asked about the incident, she stated it was on February 16, 2024, despite filing the complaint herself on March 18, 2024. Lawyer Al-Qattan said, “If we assume, for the sake of argument, that it is a controversial assumption, we firmly reject the notion that the complainant was subjected to what she claims without any provocation on her part. So then what is the reason for her not reporting the incident immediately after it happened in the first place if she was truthful in her false claims? Why did she wait more than thirty days to report the fabricated incident on her part?

By Jaber Al-Hamoud
Al-Seyassah/Arab Times Staff