A Kuwaiti court on Sunday sentenced an opposition youth to two years in jail for writing tweets deemed offensive to the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state, a rights activist said.

Rashed al-Enezi, who was in the courtroom to hear the sentence, was immediately arrested by police and taken to jail, the head of the independent Kuwait Society for Human Rights, Mohammad al-Humaidi, told AFP.

A Kuwaiti man was briefly kidnapped in the North Metn area by three gunmen disguised as police officers, the state-run National News Agency reported on Saturday.

NNA said Moeen Rashad Khorshid was driving his BMW X6 on the road of factories in the town of Mansourieh when three men wearing police jackets intercepted him.

Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Kuwaiti police of using "excessive force" against opposition protesters and called on the Gulf state's rulers to respect the right to peaceful assembly.

The New York-based group said riot police had on several occasions used "what appears to be excessive force to disperse largely peaceful protesters at a series of demonstrations".

Kuwait's appeals court Monday upheld a life term on two police officers convicted of torturing a citizen to death at a police station two years ago.

The court also confirmed jailing three officers for 16 years each, a fourth for 15 years and a fifth for two years and ordered their dismissal from the police force.

A Lebanese dentist was killed in Kuwait from wounds he sustained during a dispute over a parking space, reported LBCI television.

It said that Samir Jaber was stabbed by unknown assailants at a Kuwaiti mall.

Kuwait's emir criticized the opposition for stirring "chaos" on Sunday as activists demonstrated outside the parliament during a speech in which he opened the newly elected assembly.

All of us "condemn these practices and the actions that breached the law, norms and values, worried citizens and caused chaos," said Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, in a clear reference to opposition demonstrations.

Hundreds of opposition activists began a night time sit-in in the capital Kuwait City on Saturday to demand dissolution of the new parliament on the eve of its inauguration by the emir.

They had to change the original location of the protest from just opposite the parliament building to several hundred meters (yards) away after security men closed the area and blocked them.

Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah issued a decree Tuesday naming a new cabinet that retained the oil minister and brought back the finance minister who was ousted by the opposition.

The 16-member cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah, came after snap polls that were boycotted by the opposition in protest over an amendment of the electoral law of oil-rich Kuwait.

Syria has not taken any new steps in recent days that signal a readiness to use its chemical weapons arsenal, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday, citing intelligence reports.

"At this point the intelligence has really kind of leveled off. We haven't seen anything new indicating any aggressive steps to move forward in that way," Panetta told reporters aboard his plane before landing in Kuwait to discuss bolstering security ties amid tumult in the region and tensions with Iran.

Kuwaiti activists have called for protesters to camp outside parliament next Saturday on the eve of its opening session as they step up pressure to dissolve the newly elected house.

"In continuation of our peaceful movement, we call on the people of Kuwait to take part in a sleep-in (protest) at Erada Square on Saturday, December 15," in a notice posted overnight on the activists' Twitter account.