The King of Bahrain certainly doesn’t seem to like it up him. In this week’s Spectator, Kirsty Walker said her last complaint – before quitting journalism — was from the King objecting to her being rude about his regime. A Bahraini man has just been sentenced to six months in jail for ‘defaming’ the king on Twitter. Three similar Twitter users are up on similar charges next week. David Cameron should be making clear how appalled he is at this repression – except he is not in a very good position to comment.
After last year’s riots, police threatened to arrest users for inciting the looters. It seemed daft: would you really arrest people for writing posts, mostly moronic, on Twitter? Nowadays we regularly hear stories about members of the public being arrested for posting their ramblings on the site. During the Olympics one user was arrested for tweeting abuse at the diver Tom Daley, while another was jailed for almost two months for posting racist comments about a footballer.
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