KUWAIT: Family Claims US Lesbian Couple Has Been Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison For Being Gay

The mother of a former US Army soldier has launched a Change.org petition to President Obama in which she claims that her daughter and her daughter’s partner have been sentenced by a Kuwaiti court to 25 years in prison on “trumped-up” drug charges. The real reason for the sentence handed down last month, the mother says, is that the women are gay.

From the petition, which has over 86K signatures at this writing:

After active duty, Monique and her partner Larissa later returned to Kuwait to work as military contractors. On the the morning of May 8, 2015, their house was raided and police confiscated one ounce of a “tobacco-like” substance. It was sent to a lab in Germany for analysis, and it was determined to be a substance that is completely legal in Kuwait. Yet, Kuwaiti officials held them in prison anyway. After 8 months of uncharged incarceration, the one ounce of legal substance magically turned into one pound of marijuana, and on January 12, 2016, Monique and Larissa were sentenced to 20-25 years in prison.

I am begging the US Government to do what it can to get my daughter and her partner out of jail and back to the States. They have clearly been targeted by the Kuwaiti government for their lifestyle, and could spend half their lives in prison for it. This whole ordeal is a nightmare. One minute, I was expecting her for Mother’s Day, and the next, I was told she was in prison. Everything I have learned has been through her friends and her lawyer, who has only called to demand more money — money for services he hasn’t rendered. Right now, I would do anything just to hear her voice.

To this day, I cannot understand how the US government has allowed them to remain in prison. They were not in possession of an illegal substance, yet their freedom and belongings have been taken away from them. They are being held captive in a foreign land for a crime they did not commit, with no help in sight. I need all of you who read this to help me send a message to the US Government, and ask them to do what is right and get Monique and Larissa out of jail and bring them home. This injustice cannot stand. Please sign my petition.

From Detroit’s NBC affiliate:

Police broke down Coverson’s door at 3 A.M. last May and arrested her and her partner for having an ounce of a suspicious substance. A German lab determined it was synthetic marijuana, known as K2, and is legal in Kuwait. “The lawyer is saying, ‘Give me 30 days.’ That became 60 days, and now it’s a year she’s in prison,” said Coverson’s mother, Michelle Jackson.

By the time Coverson and Larissa went to trial, that one ounce of K2 had become a pound of hash. “She told me, ‘Mom, they planted this on us. We didn’t have anything like that,” Jackson said. Frank believes her sister and her same sex partner were targeted.

“They live an alternative lifestyle. That’s accepted here, but not in foreign countries,” Frank said. The American Embassy said they were not aware of Coverson’s situation. They are working with the State Department to investigate.

Homosexuality not explicitly outlawed in Kuwait, but “debauchery” laws are used to persecute and imprison gays.