ABU DHABI: Sixty-one convicted coup plotters received jail terms of up to 10 years in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday after a trial that targeted Islamists and drew criticism from human rights groups.
Among those sentenced were academics, lawyers and members of prominent UAE families, including a cousin of the ruler of one of the seven emirates in the oil-rich federation, a longtime foe of Islamist groups seeking a role in politics and state affairs.
Eight more defendants were sentenced in absentia by the Federal Supreme Court to 15 years in prison, in a judgement denounced by human rights groups as evidence of growing intolerance in the US-allied Gulf Arab country.
“These verdicts cement the UAE’s reputation as a serious abuser of basic human rights,” said Nicholas McGeehan, Gulf researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Today’s judgements mark yet another low point for the UAE’s worsening human rights record.”
Alkarama, a Swiss-based Arab human rights group, condemned the verdicts as politically driven.
“If the UAE wants to maintain their image of being a law-abiding member of the international community, the verdict should be quashed, they should be released immediately, and their records expunged,” it said in a statement.
The state news agency WAM said that apart from the eight men sentenced in absentia, 56 were jailed for 10 years and five for seven years, while 25 were acquitted, including all 13 women defendants.
Dozens of people have been detained in a crackdown on Islamists in the past year amid heightened worries among officials about a spillover of unrest in other Arab countries.
The trial, which rights groups have said included “flagrant flaws” in procedure, was widely seen as an effort to tackle what the UAE says is a threat from the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
Many of the 94 defendants belong to al-Islah, a group which the UAE says has links to Egypt’s Brotherhood. Al-Islah denies this, but says it shares some of the Brotherhood’s ideology.
The defendants, known as UAE94, were accused of “belonging to an illegal, secret organisation … that aims to counter the foundations of this state in order to seize power and of contacting foreign entities and groups to implement this plan”.
The defendants had denied the charges, and some said they had been abused in detention, an accusation the state denied.
International media have been barred from attending the court hearings, which began in March.
Today witnesses said police blocked roads outside the court and kept reporters away.
A British lawyer, Melanie Gingell, mandated by several human rights groups to attend the hearing, was informed at the last minute that she could not do so, the groups said in a statement. (Agencies)