The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sentenced to three years in prison for the crimes of money laundering and tax evasion one of the lawyers, a US national, of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
The lawyer, Asim Ghafoor, an American, was also sentenced to pay a fine of 816,748 dollars. Ghafoor's defense stated that the charges "are not, at all, adjusted to reality" and "I only hope that this sentence was not politically motivated." In the words of American lawyer Faisal Gill, the convicted Asim Ghafoor "had never heard of these accusations and overnight they have thrown him in jail."
According to the version released by the UAE news agency, Ghafoor's arrest was the result of a coordinated action with the US authorities to "combat transnational crimes" in reference to alleged transfer of money from the United States to the UAE. In this regard, the lawyer wonders: "If the United States had these accusations against him, why would they not have accused him in the United States itself?" The arrest took place at the Dubai airport.
