UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed al-Maktoum informed top Morsi adviser Essam el-Haddad and intelligence chief Mohammed Shahata in a meeting on Wednesday that it “is not possible” to free the detainees without trial.
"We have a strong court system and justice will take its course," UAE newspaper Gulf News said the Egyptian delegation was told.
UAE-Egypt relations deteriorated after Mohammed Morsi was last June elected president in the first democratic elections in the North African country since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in a revolution in early 2011.
The UAE says the group of Egyptian nationals it arrested last month gathered sensitive information and had links to Emirati detainees accused of posing a threat to its national security.
Mahmud Ghozlan, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, said in Cairo that the detention was an "unjust campaign" against his compatriots, most of whom are doctors or engineers.
