Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have arrested Qatari “spies,” an Emirati daily reported on Wednesday in a new sign of mounting tensions between Doha and its Gulf neighbours.
The report in al-Khaleej newspaper, which cited Emirati sources, was in response to a report in Qatar’s al-Arab daily that three Qataris had been subjected to “arrest and torture” in UAE capital Abu Dhabi.
They were “Qatari intelligence elements operating on UAE soil,” Al-Khaleej wrote on its front page. “They were arrested and are being questioned.”
Relations between Qatar and its Gulf neighbours Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain sunk to a new low in March when the three governments recalled their ambassadors from Doha.
They accused Qatar of meddling in their internal affairs and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, designated as a terror group by Egypt in December after the military’s ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, in a move mirrored by the Egyptian army’s Saudi backers.
