UAE Detains Former Lawyer for Jamal Khashoggi

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) security agents have detained US citizen and civil rights attorney Asim Ghafoor, who previously served as a lawyer for slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Ghafoor was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.

The UAE’s state-linked newspaper "The National" said he would be deported to the US after completing his sentence.

State-run media said US authorities had requested the UAE’s help with an investigation into his alleged tax evasion and suspicious money transfers.

The prison sentence was announced a day after the Washington-based human rights watchdog Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) raised alarm about the arrest of Ghafoor, one of its board members, at Dubai international airport.

Dawn said Ghafoor, a civil rights lawyer based in Virginia who had represented Khashoggi and his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, was in transit to Istanbul on Thursday to attend a wedding when plainclothes security agents detained him and sent him to an Abu Dhabi detention facility before he could change planes.