Kuwait arrests govt staffer for promoting ISIS online

Kuwaiti police have arrested a government employee accused of spreading the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group's ideology online, the interior ministry said.

Othman Zain Nayef, a 26-year-old Kuwaiti national, had "used his office and computer to spread the extremist ideology of the so-called Daesh terrorist organisation", it said in a statement late Thursday, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS

The ministry, quoted by state news agency KUNA, said he had allegedly confessed to being a member of the group's "electronic army" and to having hacked official websites "in friendly and sister states".

Kuwaiti authorities announced last month having dismantled three ISIS cells plotting attacks, including a suicide bombing against a Shiite mosque and hitting an interior ministry target. An ISIS-linked suicide bomber killed 26 worshippers last year when he blew himself up in a mosque of Kuwait's Shiite minority, in the worst such attack in the Gulf state's history.