The UAE’s Attorney General has referred 13 people and 6 companies to the State Security Court for a major weapons smuggling operation to the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under General Al-Burhan.
The men sent Kalashnikovs, grenades
and more than 5 million rounds to SAF.
The weapon-smuggling operation was handled on the Sudanese side by SAF’s Chief of Staff Yasser Al Atta while the mastermind abroad was Sudan’s former intelligence chief Salah Gosh, who has been living in exile in Egypt and Eritrea since the previous Sudanese regime was toppled in 2019.
Both men have extensive ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Salah Gosh is a particularly shady character who as a student during the 1980s provided Hassan al Turabi's Islamist NIF movement with information about the beliefs of various fellow student activists.
After the 1989 coup, he joined the Islamist government and helped Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden establish their base of operations in Sudan during the early 1990s.
From his base in Egypt, he has been helping arm the Islamists in SAF and has reportedly also been trying to build an Islamist militia in Eritrea.
The weapons-smuggling operation in the UAE was reportedly overseen by General al-Burhan’s armament committee and relied on shell companies, fake humanitarian aid cover and forged documents.
The Muslim Brotherhood has played a deep and longstanding role in Sudanese politics and the military. Emerging under Egyptian influence in the 1940s–50s, it supplied the ideological core for Omar al-Bashir’s 1989 Islamist coup and retained influence in state institutions even after his regime was toppled in 2019.
During the current civil war, Sudanese MB networks and the Sudanese Islamic Movement, along with its armed al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade, have mobilized thousands of fighters for SAF, often backed by Iranian ties.
Meanwhile, the UAE remains one of the region’s strongest opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It officially designated the group as terrorists in 2014 and pursued major crackdowns against them.
Abu Dhabi sees the Brotherhood as a serious threat because of its transnational agenda, secret parallel structures and long record of subversion.
The investigation into the weapon-smuggling case is another example of the UAE’s efforts to dismantle the Brotherhood’s covert arms networks in Sudan.
Not every Gulf state has been strict against the Brotherhood. The Islamist group has long enjoyed shelter and support in Qatar, which hosted senior leaders, funded its activities and amplified them through Al Jazeera.
Other actors are still on the fence.
European states, which often stress their geographic proximity with Sudan and the need to end the civil war there, have so far done little to combat the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence there.
The European Parliament recently passed a resolution calling for the IRGC to be terror-listed, but no action has been taken against the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies spreading chaos in Sudan.
It’s time for Brussels to follow the UAE’s example and lock up all MB terrorists.