KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - A Kuwaiti court sentenced opposition leader and former MP Mussallam al-Barrak to five years in prison on Monday after he was convicted of insulting the country’s emir. Barrak, a nationalist, was charged with making statements offensive to the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, at a public rally on October 15. Criticising the emir is a crime in Kuwait that carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail. “The court has sentenced the defendant Mussallam al-Barrak to five years in prison with immediate effect,” said judge Wael al-Atiqi in a half-packed courtroom in Kuwait City’s Palace of Justice. Barrak later told supporters at his residence that the “ruling is illegal but I will give myself up to police if they come to pick me up.”