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Dozens on trial on terrorism charges in UAE

Just days after the Islamic State bombings in Paris, a court in the United Arab Emirates heard the case of 41 people, most of them Emiratis, who are accused of plotting to overthrow the federal government and replace it with an Islamic-State style “caliphate.”
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November 17, 2015

This article originally appeared on The Media Line.

Just days after the Islamic State bombings in Paris, a court in the United Arab Emirates heard the case of 41 people, most of them Emiratis, who are accused of plotting to overthrow the federal government and replace it with an Islamic-State style “caliphate.”

“To carry out their terrorist acts, the suspects procured firearms, ammunition and explosives using funds they raised for this purpose and communicated with foreign militants,” Salem Saeed Kubaish, the UAE’s Attorney General said at the trial. “These militants provided these suspects with funds and peple to achieve their goals inside the country.”

Prosecutors presented five weapons to the court, including Kalashnikov rifles, and machine guns, as well as seven large boxes of bullets and magazines. They said that Al Manara had received the weapons as well as other assistance from the al-Nusra Front in Syria and the Al Ansar Front in the Baluchistan province in Iraq.

Two witnesses told the court that the defendants’ intention was to overthrow the government, attack shopping malls and hotels, and overthrow the government of the UAE, which consists of seven separate confederated states run by the King.

Some of the defendants denied the charges. One man admitted that he had possessed one of the rifles but said it was a hunting rifle and belonged to his father. The judge ruled that the trial would continue next month.

Several terrorism experts told The Media Line that they had never heard of Al Manara, showing the difficulty of tracking all of these groups. Even several experts living in the area said they did not have information.

The experts said that the formation of the group could be part of the rivalry between Islamic State and al Nusra, both Sunni Arab groups. Islamic State has had more “successful” coordinated attacks such as last week’s large-scale bombings in Paris, while Al Nusra has gotten bogged down in Syria fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Al Nusra is the local affiliate of al-Qa’ida, which has claimed responsibility for the September 2011 attacks in the US.

Unlike other Sunni groups, Al Nusra praised the recent attacks in France, while still criticizing Islamic State.

“We are happy if a deviant sect successfully executes an operation against the Kufaar (infidels)” read a statement released by the group (from a Twitter account since deleted) over the weekend, adding it would have preferred that al-Nusra had carried out such an attack, according to the Middle East Eye.

Al Qa’ida is trying to regain its footing as the primary Sunni organization. Last year, the group’s branch in the Sinai Peninsula, which has been responsible for attacks that have killed hundreds of Egyptian security forces, switched its loyalty to Islamic State.

Al Qa’ida has begun publishing a news magazine in English called al-Risala, as a way of competing with Islamic State.

“Due to its sophisticated global media strategy, Islamic State manages to reach today a far wider audience than al-Qa’ida,” Adam Hoffman of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University told The Media Line. “Al-Risala (the message) is published online in English and being distributed through social media.”

He said that the magazine, with its colorful headlines and striking visual images, ridicules Islamic State and plays down their achievements.

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