DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (Reuters) — Security forces in the United Arab Emirates have arrested members of a cell made up of militants from Saudi Arabia and the emirates who were planning to carry out attacks in both countries and in other states, the official Emirates News Agency said on Wednesday.
The federation of seven emirates, a major oil exporter and an ally of the United States, has had no attacks by Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. But Islamist sentiment has risen in recent years, and Dubai, a business and tourism hub that attracts many Westerners, could make an attractive target for militants, analysts say.
The suspects had acquired materials and equipment for use in what the news agency called terrorist operations.
“The security authorities in the U.A.E., in coordination with the related security parties in Saudi Arabia, announced the arrest of an organized cell from the deviant group that was planning to carry out actions against national security of both countries and some brotherly states,” the agency said, without elaborating.
The phrase “deviant group” is often used by the authorities in Saudi Arabia to describe Al Qaeda.
In August, the Saudi authorities arrested a group of militants in Riyadh — mostly Yemeni nationals — suspected of having links to Al Qaeda. Thousands of people believed to be militants have been arrested since dozens were killed in terrorist attacks between 2003 and 2006 on Saudi residential compounds and offices for foreign workers and on government facilities.
The United States has poured aid into Yemen to stem the threat of attacks from the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and to try to prevent any spillover of violence into Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter.
In 2010, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, formed with the merger of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi branches, said it was behind a plot to send two parcel bombs to the United States. The bombs were intercepted in Britain and Dubai.
Though the emirates have escaped much of the upheaval that has shaken the Arab world, the authorities have moved swiftly to stem any sign of political dissent, detaining more than 60 Islamists this year over suspected threats to state security and links to foreign groups.
Those detainees, who belong to an Islamist group called Al-Islah, have confessed to setting up a secret organization with an armed force whose aim was to take power and establish an Islamic state, the local news media reported in September. The group denied the accusations.
Many of the detained Islamists are from the more religiously conservative northern emirates like Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, which produced one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
United Arab Emirates Arrests Suspects in Terror Plots
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United Arab Emirates Arrests Suspects in Terror Plots
