A well-known Kuwaiti activist, who made his name by posting satire-like microblogs on Twitter, has been taken under police custody for his latest tweet, shocking many of his followers in the social media platform.

Human rights advocate Abo Asam has been ordered to be detained for ten days as investigations on his offensive tweet are going on while many of his fans posted a hash tag Tweet, which basically means "freedom for Abo Asam."

Like Us on Facebook

Two weeks ago, Asam posted one of his popular contemptuous satires in lengthy Arabic that accuses a religious group's followers for indiscriminately following their leader Hamad al-Uthman.

The Jamiya is a group under the Islamist Salafi movement whose followers are mostly from Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This group comprises more than 2 percent of Kuwaits Muslim population.

Asam's Tweet was deemed 'in contempt of religion' by local authorities, a reason they believed to be enough to justify his arrest.

After the news of his detention broke, fans of the charismatic advocate used his freedom hash tag nearly 8,000 times.

Many questioned the legality of his arrest with one saying, "Is it possible that someone like Abo Asam could be imprisoned for a tweet? This is not Kuwait at all."

Another described the famous satirist as one who "always stands by the truth."

However, this was not the first time the Twitter star was taken into custody by the Kuwaiti police.

He was arrested in April because of a series of satiric Tweets that seemed to openly ridicule the Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah.

Compared with their more conservative neighbors, Kuwaitis have enjoyed freedom of expression in the past, especially in social media platforms. It has been a common practice for Kuwaiti netizens to openly criticize their leaders without worrying about being reprimanded.

However, past reports of arrests due to 'offensive' tweets have many of them concerned about their well-enjoyed freedom of speech.

TagsKuwait, satirist, Star, human rights activist