UAE officials say Qatar hack claim is not true

Senior officials denied a report in The Washington Post that alleges the UAE orchestrated a purported hack of Qatari state media that sparked the crisis between four Arab countries and Doha over its support for extremism.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr Anwar Gargash, said yesterday the report was “not true, purely not true”.

“You will see in the next few days that The Washington Post story is going to die,” he said at Chatham House in London.

Earlier, the UAE Ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba, said the story was false.

“The UAE had no role whatsoever in the alleged hacking described in the article,” Mr Al Otaiba said.

“What is true is Qatar’s behaviour.

“Funding, supporting and enabling extremists from the Taliban to Hamas and Qaddafi … inciting violence, encouraging radicalisation and undermining the stability of its neighbours.”

On May 24, two days after US president Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh, the Qatar News Agency carried on its website and in a ticker on an online video, incendiary quotes attributed to Sheikh Tamim, the emir of Qatar, including a denunciation of the summit and praise for Iran and Hamas.

The comments were cited by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt as the spark that reignited an even more serious diplomatic crisis than occurred in 2014 over Doha’s support for Islamist groups across the region, and funding terrorist groups in Libya, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Qatari officials have maintained that the quotes were part of an elaborate information warfare operation and have said they had tied parts of it to iPhones in nearby countries, but never singled out a specific actor or nation.

Anonymous United States intelligence officials reportedly told The Washington Post that “newly analysed information gathered by US intelligence agencies confirmed that on May 23, senior members of the UAE Government discussed the plan and its implementation”.

The article stated the officials were still not certain whether the hacks were carried out by contractors or officials.

Last month, Mr Al Otaiba’s emails were hacked and released by a group that is linked to Qatar, called GlobalLeaks.