According to Ahlul Bayt (A) News Agency – ABNA.ir – The Supreme Court in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi ruled that the six men were guilty of channelling money to assist the Taleban campaign in Afghanistan. Two further Emiratis were acquitted of the charges.
The five Emirati men were found to have raised funds which the Afghan defendant, Abdul Wahab Sultan Gulam, was to send to the Taleban. It is not known how much money the group raised, or if it was successfully funnelled to Afghanistan.
The local paper Gulf News reported that two Emirati defendants, Rashid Dawood and Abdullah Hassan, were given an extra year in jail for attempting to set up an Islamist organisation.
The fundamentalist organisation aimed to impose a strict code of Islam, like the Taleban itself. Three Emirati men and one Bangladeshi were attacked for breaching the group’s interpretation of Sharia law.
Mr Dawood was found guilty of assaulting the Bangladeshi man for speaking to a woman on the phone. The man was beaten, stripped naked and photographed on a mobile phone.
The court ruled that the organisation breached civil liberties.
Dawood and Hassan were also found to have downloaded military training videos and circulated news from Islamist websites. However, there was no further evidence the group was planning to launch terrorist attacks itself.
The eight defendants were arrested in October 2008 after raids by federal security forces in Khor Fakkan, a port on the east coast of the country. All eight denied the charges and claimed the evidence against them was uncorroborated. They also said they had been forced to sign confessions.
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