Egyptian media is reporting that last month, supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi attacked the United Arab Emirates embassy in Cairo’s Heliopolis. According to an Ahram Online report:
Ahram Online, Friday 22 Nov 2013 Security forces fired tear gas at supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi on Friday after they attacked the United Arab Emirates embassy in Cairo’s Heliopolis. Protesters assaulted the embassy’s guards, according to Al-Ahram’s Arabic website.
The UAE, a staunch opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood – the group from which Morsi hails – has been among several Arab states backing the former president’s ouster.
According to eyewitness accounts, protesters also threw Molotov cocktails at a tram line near Al-Nozha street in Nasr City, setting a carriage on fire. They also set fire to a nearby kiosk.
Police fired tear gas at pro-Morsi students at Al-Azhar University, located in Nasr City, to prevent them from protesting outside the campus grounds.
The students were marking 100 days since the violent August dispersal of two pro-Morsi protest camps at Rabaa Al-Adawiya mosque and Nahda Square.
According to Aswat Masriya news website, rocks and other objects were hurled between protesters, police and local bystanders in the vicinity of Al-Azhar University.
Read the rest here.
The GMBDW reported earlier last month that the UAE had launched a trial of 30 Emiratis and Egyptians charged with setting up an illegal branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The GMBDW reported in July that 65 suspects charged by the UAE authorities on similar charges of setting up an illegal branch of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood had received sentences of up to 15 years. A post from June reported that 30 Egyptians and Emiratis had been charged in connection with that case. In January of this year, the UAE announced that it would try 94 people on charges of trying to seize power in that country.
In April, the Gulf News 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. 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.
Read the rest here.
Egyptian journalist Abdel Latif el-Menawy recently published an article titled “From Refuge To Rebellion, The Gulf’s Muslim Brotherhood” that looks at the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf countries and its relationship to the Egyptian organization.
The New York Times reported in mid-January on the continuing conflict between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Our predecessor publication extensively covered the ongoing developments concerning the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf countries.