The Kuwaiti Wedding

Nasra Yussef Mohammad al-Enezi was 23 and living in Kuwait’s Jahra Governorate when her husband took a second wife in the summer of 2009. On the evening of August 15, 2009, the women and children attending the new couple’s wedding gathered in a large tent in the Oyoun area to celebrate. Al-Enezi, the groom’s first wife, went to the tent that night.

At about 9:20 p.m., she poured gasoline on the tent and set it on fire. The rented tent had a single exit and fell short of safety requirements. Fire engulfed it in roughly three minutes, and many guests could not get out. Fifty-seven people died and dozens more were injured, many of them women and children. Investigators said she wanted revenge on her husband for marrying again, and the family’s maid told police that al-Enezi had started the fire.

Al-Enezi confessed after her arrest but later took the confession back, saying she had been pressured and offering other explanations for her actions that night. Her trial opened in October 2009. In March 2010 the court found her guilty of 57 counts of premeditated murder and sentenced her to death. On January 25, 2017, she was hanged at Kuwait’s Central Prison, one of seven people executed in the country that day.