UAE court jails seven for Hezbollah links
A top Emirati court on Monday sentenced seven people to up to life in prison after convicting them of forming a cell linked to Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, state media said.
One Emirati national and two Lebanese men were given life sentences, while an Iraqi and another Lebanese man were sentenced to 15 years each, according to state news agency WAM.
An Egyptian woman and another Emirati man were each handed a 10-year sentence, it said.
The charges included "passing classified information about a governmental department to Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist (group) and for the benefit of a foreign country," WAM said.
The defendants were also accused of passing information about "oil production in one of the emirates as well as maps of oil and gas fields," it said.
They were also charged with "forming and managing an international group belonging to the (Hezbollah) party without a licence from the government," it added.
The trial at the state security court was attended by some of the defendants' family members, as well as lawyers and representatives of local media, WAM said.
Foreign media outlets are not usually given access to state security trials.
The Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council in March declared Hezbollah a "terrorist" group over the movement's backing for the Syrian government.
Hezbollah is fighting in Syria in support of the government of President Bashar al-Assad against opponents including Gulf-backed rebels.
In another hearing, the court jailed an Emirati man, 24, for seven years for "fighting with a terrorist group in Syria", The National daily reported.
His sister, 34, was sentenced to five years and fined 500,000 dirhams ($136,240) for posting insulting tweets against the state, the paper said.
The 24-year-old was found guilty of joining the Ahrar al-Sham Islamist rebel group in Syria in 2013 and receiving military training.
His lawyer said he had gone to war-ravaged Syria only to retrieve the body of his father who was killed while fighting for the group, the paper said.
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