Ex-MB member says Europe became backbone for Muslim Brotherhood

CAIRO – 25 August 2019: During an interview with French magazine ‘Le Point’, Emirati Abdulrahman Al Suwaidi, who was a former Muslim Brotherhood member, has said he regrets ever joining the terrorist organization.

Suwaidi was a Muslim Brotherhood member for 35 consecutive years before he fled the UAE to reach Oman, then Yemen, Turkey, Thailand and Malaysia, until he was finally caught in Indonesia for the possession of forged documents.

The 55-year-old former MB member further warned that Europe became the backbone of the Muslim Brotherhood, as many of the organization’s leaders are currently residing in London.

UAE President Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has pardoned Suwaidi after he discovered that the group had planned to destabilize the UAE’s security and so he decided to revoke his allegiance to it and return to his homeland.”

Al-Suwaidi was arrested by authorities in Indonesia in 2015, despite his request for political asylum after leaving the UAE.

According to human rights reports, following his deportation Al-Suwaidi was severely tortured and remained forcibly disappeared for more than 100 days before appearing in the Federal Court in 2016.

The Federal Court later sentenced him to 15 years in prison for signing a document calling for political reform.

In mid-2017, Al-Suwaidi appeared on an official UAE channel to confess and claiming that Qatar had offered passports and funds to the group’s leaders.