By B Izzak

KUWAIT: Leading opposition MP Shuaib Al-Muwaizri yesterday filed to grill Interior Minister Anas Al-Saleh over alleged wide-ranging violations that include police abuses, irregularities in electoral rolls and carrying out commercial activities as a minister. Assembly Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanem said he received the grilling and informed the Cabinet. He said the grilling will be listed on the agenda of the next regular session, which will be determined by the Assembly office.

Muwaizri claimed in the grilling that the minister committed a large number of grave constitutional and legal violations that necessitated filing this questioning. He claimed in the grilling that the interior minister continued to practice businesses while in the Cabinet and that his businesses benefited from his post as a member of the Cabinet, alleging his companies were awarded contracts worth millions of dinars.

The lawmaker said in the grilling that the Kuwaiti constitution and laws ban any minister or senior official from conducting any commercial or financial deals with the government while in their posts. But he said Saleh benefited from his Cabinet post and that his companies won contracts with the government worth dozens of millions of dinars, which constitute a flagrant violation of the constitution.

Muwaizri also accused the minister of failing to do enough to stop illegal arrests, detentions and even torture at police stations and other interior ministry centers in total violation of the country's constitution and laws. He said merely based on suspicion or a complaint, interior ministry interrogators immediately call suspects before carrying out any investigation to establish if the suspicion or complaint is serious. And when the suspects arrive at police stations, they are immediately detained before any interrogation, adding that all these practices breach the law.

Muwaizri said policemen sometimes arrest people without following requirements under the law because they feel they have immunity, without being held to account by authorities. He said many people were victims of such illegal practices that the minister failed to stop.

In another issue, the lawmaker claimed that wide-ranging violations and irregularities have taken place in the electoral rolls and the ministry of interior has failed to carry out its duties to prevent those violations. He said that the latest electoral rolls published in March and April contained grave violations that could impact the outcome of the parliamentary elections.

Citing examples, Muwaizri said that the interior ministry failed to delete the names of dead people, saying that some rolls included names of people who died eight years ago. He claimed that the new rolls contained massive transfers of large numbers of voters to other constituencies to influence the outcome by ensuring the success of certain candidates in the upcoming elections in November. The debate of the grilling is expected to take place in the same session where another grilling of Finance Minister Barrak Al-Sheetan is scheduled to be debated.