By Stan Goodenough
Feb 19, 2008
In contrast to the widespread Arab and Muslim world's lionization of top Hizb'allah leader Imad Mugniyah who was killed in a mysterious car bombing in Damascus, Syria last week, the Kuwaiti government Monday denounced him as "a terrorist whose hands have been stained with blood."
The government was not referring to Mugniyah's hundreds of victims - Jewish, American, French - but to two Kuwaitis who were allegedly killed during the hijacking of a Kuwait Airways flight in 1988.
"The Cabinet regrets and condemns the eulogizing and glorifying by some of a terrorist whose hands have been stained with the blood of Jabriya martyrs Abdullah Al-Khaldi and Khalid Ayoub," it said.
Mugniyah’s death was "a just punishment from Allah" and his two victims could now rest in peace, it said, according to a report in the Arab Times.
Observers said the majority Kuwaiti government was anxious to keep a rift from opening between the country's majority Sunnis and minority Shiites.
Mugniyah was a Shiite.
Kuwaiti Minister for Cabinet Affairs Faisal Al-Hajji said it was everybody’s responsibility to save the country from "what other societies that neighbor us" are suffering from.
Iraq has long been torn by Muslim sectarian violence.