KUWAIT CITY - KuwaitÂ’s supreme court on Tuesday upheld 10-year jail terms against three Iraqi nationals, two of whom were sentenced in absentia, for spying for the former regime of Saddam Hussein before the US-led invasion, a legal source said.In May 2004, the appeals court passed the verdict on the three men -- Zuhair Fakira, Nazem Jawad and Mustafa Khalil -- two months after the lower court acquitted them of the charges. Jawad and Khalil, who worked as intelligence officers at the Iraqi embassy in Bahrain, were handed the terms in absentia. Fakira was accused of passing on information to the former Iraqi regime through the two Bahrain-based intelligence agents.
The appeals court also fined each of them around 18,000 dinars (60,000 dollars) for stealing a car and selling it in Iraq. But it refrained from issuing any sentence on a fourth accomplice -- a Saudi national -- because he only took part in transferring the stolen car to Iraq.
Fakira was arrested in Kuwait in February 2003, one month before US and British forces invaded Iraq from the emirate to topple Saddam Hussein. The two other Iraqis remain at large.