UAE sentences scores of Islamists in coup plot trial

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A UAE court today jailed most of 94 Islamists, including 13 women, up to 15 years after convicting them with a plot to overthrow the country’s rulers.

The UAE state security court jailed 56 of the 94 Emiratis for between seven and ten years, media here reported.

Eight of those tried in absentia have been sentenced to 15 years in jail. Five have been handed sentences between three to seven years and 25 have been acquitted, Gulf News said.

The defendants were members of now-disbanded Al Islah Society, an Emirati-based Islamist group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, the report said.

During the hearings, the public prosecution had called on the court of justice Falah Al Hajiri to apply the maximum sentence of 15 years against the defendants.

According to Abu Dhabi TV, the lawyer for the accused has appealed to President Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to pardon the convicted persons.

The prosecution had argued that one of the main goals of the organisation “was to infiltrate the country’s educational and social institutions” and “seeking to oppose the basic principles of the UAE system of governance and to seize power.”

Of the 81 male defendants, ten were tried in absentia. The accused also included 13 female suspects.