DUBAI, July 17, (Agencies): Three Emirati Islamists including a prominent lawyer were arrested in the UAE on Tuesday as part of a widening clampdown on Islamist dissidents, relatives and activists said.
The arrests brought the number of detained Emirati dissidents, most of them Islamists, to 10 since Sunday, when the Gulf Arab state said it was investigating a foreign-linked group planning “crimes against the security of the state”.

Interior Ministry officials were not available for comment on Tuesday.

The UAE, a major oil exporter, allows no organised political opposition. It has avoided the political unrest that has toppled four Arab heads of state since last year thanks in part to its cradle-to-grave welfare system.

But it has also moved swiftly against dissidents, and last year stripped citizenship from Islamists whom it deemed a security threat and jailed activists who called for more power for a semi-elected advisory council.

Lawyer Mohammed al-Roken, his son and son-in-law were detained on Tuesday, activists and family members said. All are linked to the local Islamist group al-Islah (Reform), which has been the target of a crackdown in the UAE. Roken represented seven Islamists stripped of citizenship last year.

“He (Roken) was taken by security officials at 2am in the morning when he was out with the driver looking for his son and son-in-law who were also arrested,” a relative told Reuters.

UAE authorities have expressed concern that the growing influence of Islamists in post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia could embolden Islamist groups at home.

Islamists in the UAE say they share similar ideology with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt but have no direct links with the group, seen as a mentor for Islamist groups in the region.

They say they want more civil rights and greater power for the Federal National Council, a quasi-parliamentary body that advises the government but has no legislative power.

The men detained over the past days mostly come from the more religiously conservative emirates such as Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, which are also less affluent than the oil-rich capital Abu Dhabi and trade hub Dubai.

Authorities have also closed the office of the Arabian Gulf Center for Educational Consultations in the northern Ajman emirate, said the owner of the center, who has links to Islah.

Ahmed al-Shiba, a brother of one of the men arrested on Monday, told Reuters by telephone from the United Kingdom that the center, which has been open since 2003, was shut down by UAE officials on Tuesday.

“In the past year there has been a defamatory campaign against the center where some were calling it ikhwanji (affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood),” he said.

Meanwhile, a rights activist deported from the United Arab Emirates, whose case a UN official said raised “disturbing questions”, vowed on Tuesday to continue to fight for the rights of stateless people in the Gulf Arab state.

Human Rights Watch called Monday’s deportation of Ahmed Abdul Khaleq “unlawful expulsion” and part of a wider crackdown on dissent in the UAE.

Abdul Khaleq, 35, told Reuters he was not charged with any offence but assumes he was held in detention for nearly two months in Abu Dhabi because of his human rights activism and campaigning for the stateless.

He is a “bidoon”, a reference to the tens of thousands of people who live in the UAE without citizenship.
“Without an identity card, you are a dead man. You cannot do anything,” Abdul told Reuters.

Abdul Khaleq, who was born in the UAE and has lived there all his life, was one of five activists jailed last year for insulting the state’s rulers before being pardoned.

He runs the “Emaraty Bedoon” blog and calls the UAE a “mafia without any rules”. As of Tuesday his website was still online.

He used a Comoros Islands passport he was issued in May to travel to Thailand which gave him a two-month tourist visa and also a warning not to do anything that hurt its relations with the Gulf state.
Amnesty International on Tuesday urged Emirati authorities to allow the stateless blogger to return to the Gulf state after he was “forced” to leave to Thailand.

“Forcing a stateless man born in the United Arab Emirates to choose between indefinite detention there or exile in Thailand heralds a further decline in the UAE’s human rights situation,” Amnesty said.

Meanwhile, Saudi authorities have detained a Saudi national for setting up a website that “harms the public order and violates Islamic values”, court documents and his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia, which follows an austere version of Sunni Islam, shows little tolerance towards public dissent and censors its media. Cyber crime regulations that came into force in 2007 make bloggers and website owners legally accountable for what they publish online.

The 25-year-old Ra’if Badawi, who runs the website “Free Saudi Liberals”, was charged with cyber crime and also with disobeying his father, which is considered a crime in the conservative Arab monarchy and top U.S. ally.

“He did that by setting up a website that harms the public order and violates Islamic values, including insulting the divine being and attacking some religious icons such as the Grand Mufti,” a document from the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution showed.

The Mufti is Saudi Arabia’s top religious authority.

Spokesmen from the Justice Ministry and the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution did not respond to calls or messages for comment.

Court documents show the evidence against Badawi includes a post on the website that asks, “is God unjust?”, sarcastic remarks about the Saudi religious police and a senior scholar, and a post that asks, “why is Saudi’s Grand Mufti blind?”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned the charges and called for Badawi’s release in a report issued on Tuesday.

“Saudi authorities should drop charges and release the editor of the Free Saudi Liberals website for violating his right to freedom of expression on matters of religion and religious figures,” the group said in the report.

If convicted, Badawi faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to three million Saudi riyals ($800,000), HRW said.