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Omanis With Links to an Islamist Group to Go on Trial Today 

Agence France Presse

MUSCAT, 18 April 2005 — 

A group of Omanis arrested earlier this year for their links with a banned secret organization are to go on trial today, legal sources said yesterday.

They gave no details, but one source said 10 defendants would appear at the initial hearing.

Attorney General Hussein bin Ali Al-Hilali said on March 25 that the interrogation procedures were about to be completed and they would stand trial in a special court.

The statement stressed that all the guarantees under the Basic Law — Oman’s first written constitution issued in 1996 — had been taken into consideration and implemented.

The suspects would be “allowed to engage lawyers to defend them in the court as per the law, and the sentences issued against them announced in the media,” it said, without specifying how many Islamist suspects were to go on trial.

It said only that “a group of citizens were arrested for being linked to a banned secret organization” and the authorities had gathered evidence confirming the existence of the unnamed group.