Mohammed al-Ajami
Qatari poet
Mohammed al-Ajami (also known as "Mohammed Ibn al-Dheeb"; Arabic: محمد بن الذيب العجمي; born in Qatar), is a Qatari poet who was imprisoned between 2011 and 2016 on state security charges. Prior to his arrest, he was a literature student at Cairo University. On 29 November 2012, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, a sentence commuted in March 2016 through royal pardon.
Arrest and detention
Al-Ajami was summoned to meet with state security officials on 16 November 2011 in Doha, and was arrested when he arrived for the meeting. He was charged with insulting Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and "inciting to overthrow the ruling system". Under Qatari law, the latter charge is punishable by death. As of 29 October 2012, al-Ajami's trial had been postponed five times; he also spent five months in solitary confinement.
On 29 November 2012, al-Ajami's lawyer, Najeeb Al Nuaimi, reported that al-Ajami had been sentenced to life imprisonment in a secret trial. The court heard testimony from three poetry experts employed by the government ministries of education and culture, who stated that al-Ajami's poem had insulted the emir and his son. While confessing authorship of the poem, al-Ajami stated that he had not intended for it to be insulting, calling the emir "a good man".
The public source identifies “Mohammed al-Ajami” as qatari poet. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mohammed, al-Ajami and Qatari.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q618671. VIAF identifies the subject as 316776671. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2016 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mohammed al-Ajami” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.