Kuwait detains, acquits journalist, then revokes his citizenship and family’s too

Kuwait’s decision to strip Ahmed Shihab-Eldin and his two sisters of citizenship transformed a wartime-posts case into a much broader test of press freedom, dual nationality and state power in a country that bars dual citizens from keeping both passports.

Shihab-Eldin, a Kuwaiti-American journalist with bylines at The New York Times, PBS, Al Jazeera English, the BBC, VICE and HuffPost, was detained in Kuwait on March 3 after last being seen publicly on March 2 while visiting family there. The Committee to Protect Journalists said authorities accused him of spreading false information, harming national security and misusing his mobile phone after he reposted publicly available videos and images related to the Iran war, including footage verified by CNN and other outlets.

A Kuwaiti court acquitted him on all charges on April 23 after 52 days in detention. By April 25, CPJ said he had been reunited with his family and was in a place of safety. The case had already drawn alarm from press-freedom advocates, who said his detention reflected a wider Gulf crackdown on social-media posts and wartime reporting tied to Israel-Iran-U.S. military activity.

That concern deepened on April 29, when CPJ said Kuwait revoked Shihab-Eldin’s citizenship and that of his two sisters, Lana Shihab-Eldin and Luma Shihab-Eldin. Reporting said the revocation list covered 21 people and was issued by the Supreme Committee for Nationality Affairs, also identified as the Kuwaiti nationality investigation committee, under Article 11 of Kuwait’s nationality law, which prohibits dual nationality. Shihab-Eldin is a dual U.S. and Kuwaiti citizen.

For press-freedom groups, the sequence carried an unmistakable warning: a journalist was detained over speech, acquitted, and then hit with a nationality penalty that reached his family as well. CPJ called the revocation a dangerous escalation and a chilling precedent for journalists in Kuwait and across the region, where vague security and misinformation laws have increasingly been used to police online speech and wartime coverage. In a Gulf state that is a key U.S. partner, the case now stands as a stark example of how citizenship itself can become a lever of pressure against journalists.