Middle Eastern media is reporting that 30 Egyptians and Emiratis have been charged by the UAE authorities for allegedly setting up an illegal branch of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. According to an Al-Jazeera report:
19 Jun 2013 A group of 30 Egyptians and Emiratis have been charged by the UAE authorities for allegedly setting up an illegal branch of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, a prosecutor has said.
The suspects have been referred to the Gulf nation’s State Security Court, prosecutor Ahmed al-Dhanhani said on Wednesday.
He accused the group of having ‘established and managed a branch for … the international organisation of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood without a permit’.
The founders of the branch set up an administrative structure aimed at recruiting members for the Muslim Brotherhood, strengthening its presence in the UAE and maintaining allegiance to the main party, he said.
About a dozen Egyptians, some of them doctors, engineers and university professors, belonging to the group had been arrested between November 2012 and January 2013, according to Human Rights Watch.
The detained group was also linked to a separate network of about 94 Emirati Islamists, including 13 women, who are on trial for forming a ‘secret organisation plotting to overthrow the regime’.
Most or all of the 94 defendants are members of al-Islah association, which UAE authorities say is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Wednesday’s statement by the prosecution said the 30-member group ‘received financial support from the secret organisation’.
The case of the arrested Egyptians has sparked a sharp deterioration in relations between Abu Dhabi and Cairo, already strained since the June 2012 election of Mohamed Morsi, who hails from the Brotherhood, as Egypt’s president.
The Gulf country, which bans political parties, rejected an earlier request from Egypt for the release of its nationals.
In January of this year, the UAE announced that it would try 94 people on charges of trying to seize power in that country. The New York Times reported in mid-January on the continuing conflict between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
In April, the Gulf News has posted an article titled “Rise and fall of Muslim Brotherhood in UAE” that provides interesting detail about the operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in that country. The article begins:
April 13, 2013 Abu Dhabi: While the Muslim Brotherhood enjoyed a lot of freedom and influence in the early 1960s and 1970s, its popularity was dealt a sharp blow in the 1990s after the government became highly suspicious of its alternative motives. The Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘conspiracy against the UAE’ goes back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, an Emirati analyst said. During those years, ‘the global movement of the Brotherhood decided to invade the UAE and other Gulf states, through recruiting students who studied abroad. Those students operated secretly through front organisations like mafia-style gangs, money-laundering and espionage rings,’ Dr Ali Salem Humaid, chairman of the Al Mezmaah Centre for Studies and Research, a Dubai-based think-tank, told Gulf News. Dr Humaid added that the Brotherhood’s cell in the UAE influenced the country’s education and judiciary until its political society Jammiyat Al Islah, was dissolved in 1994. Mansour Al Nuqaidan, a Saudi writer, quoted Mohammad Bin Ali Al Mansouri, a former member of the Islah Society’s board, as saying that the Islah had been dissolved after a complaint from Egypt that it provided financial support to Al Jihad militant group, which was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and was involved in terrorist acts. Recruitment Related Links Prominent Muslim Brotherhood idealogues The many faces of the Muslim Brotherhood Most members of the movement are recruited during high school or college years and, in many cases, serve in top administrative positions within the Brotherhood’s nationwide structure before being promoted to the Guidance Office, the organisation’s top executive authority.
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Our predecessor publication extensively covered the ongoing developments concerning the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf countries.