Kuwait jails senior official for joining IS jihadists

Kuwait's supreme court on Sunday sentenced a top bureaucrat to 10 years in jail for joining and fighting with the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq.

The court also fined the unnamed Kuwaiti national, who was a top official at the Kuwait municipality, $30,000 and convicted him of calling other people to join the group.

The ruling is final and cannot be challenged.

Kuwaiti courts have sentenced a number of IS members, sympathisers and financiers to various jail terms.

A lower court in December sentenced a Filipina to 10 years in jail after convicting her of joining the jihadist group and plotting attacks.

Authorities in July said they had dismantled three IS cells plotting attacks, including a suicide bombing against a Shia mosque and against an interior ministry target.

An IS-linked suicide bomber killed 26 worshippers in June 2015 when he blew himself up in a Shia mosque, in the worst such attack in the Gulf state's history.