DUBAI: Citizens charged with a coup plot in the UAE have said they were abused in custody and, in a statement on social media, demanded an independent inquiry.

The trial of 94 Emiratis, which began in March, is seen as an attempt by the state to address what it says is a security threat from the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

In an open letter to the UAE president and vice-president published on a Twitter account belonging to Al-Islah group, the defendants said they had been insulted, threatened and in some cases subjected to physical abuse after arrest. It was not clear how many of the 94, most of whom are in custody, had signed the letter or how it had been communicated outside prison.

Most of the detainees belong to Al-Islah, which denies government charges that it is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Attorney-general Saleem Saeed Kubaish said in January that group members had sought to penetrate state institutions, including schools, universities and ministries, according to state news agency WAM.

The defendants are accused of “belonging to an illegal, secret organization ... that aims to counter the foundations of this state in order to seize power and of contacting foreign entities and groups to implement this plan,” WAM said.

“We ... have been subjected to solitary confinement for many months in tight cells with no windows and with continuous light morning and night,” the letter said.

The group complained of insults and threats and said some had been physically abused or had not been allowed to speak to their lawyers. “(We call for) ... the formation of an independent committee to investigate these abuses,” said the group.

Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s state minister for foreign affairs, dismissed the letter as “nothing new.”

“Actually it is a repetition of the campaign that the Brotherhood has chosen against the nation,” Gargash, who is also state minister for Federal National Council Affairs, said on his Twitter page late on Thursday.

“The statement repeats this tale about torture, which it wants to attach to the nation ... and the statement disregards that the Emirates’ measures took place within a constitutional and legal framework,” he said.