CAIRO — A US lawyer detained in the United Arab Emirates since mid-July is expected to be released after his sentence was overturned by an Emirati court, overturning a sentence that raised alarm that he was being targeted for political reasons .
The lawyer, Asim Ghafoor, who lives in Virginia and works in Washington, was detained at an airport in Dubai on July 14 while waiting for a flight to Istanbul, where he was to attend a family wedding. The UAE said at the time that Mr Ghafoor had been convicted in absentia for tax evasion and money laundering after opening an investigation into him at the request of the United States, although the State Department said the United States had not requested his arrest.
As pressure from members of Congress and Islamic interest groups in the US mounted on UAE authorities to release him, Mr Ghafoor appealed his conviction at a hearing in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, on Tuesday. His three-year sentence was then overturned, although his conviction stands, said Aziza Ansari, one of his cousins.
Mr Ghafoor still faces $1.36 million fine and deportation, according to a statement Abu Dhabi’s Legal Department said a court had confiscated a sum of money from Mr Ghafoor’s account that he had illegally transferred through the UAE
It is not clear when he will be released.
The son of Indian immigrants, Mr Ghafoor has represented Muslim Americans in civil rights cases for much of his career, work for which he was controlled by the US government.
He eventually got to work with Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi columnist for The Washington Post whose horrific murder by Saudi agents in 2018 targeted global condemnation on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman. According to Mr Ghafoor’s lawyer, Mr Ghafoor was working on Mr Khashoggi’s immigration case after the Saudi dissident moved to the United States.
Mr Ghafoor also helped Mr Khashoggi locate Democracy for the Arab World Now, a Washington advocacy group that has criticized the UAE — a close ally of Saudi Arabia — for its track record of prosecuting and detaining dissidents. Mr Ghafoor is now on the board of the group. But the State Department has said there is no indication that his arrest is related to his work with Mr Khashoggi.
The UAE maintains that the case was purely about money laundering. In a statement on Monday, the Emirati Embassy in Washington said Emirati authorities had begun investigating Mr. Embassy in Abu Dhabi on behalf of US law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
The embassy statement said the Emirati investigation revealed that Mr Ghafoor laundered at least $4.9 million through the Emirati banking system, transferring the money through multiple bank accounts that “he opened with the intention of hide the origin of the money from the tax authorities. An unidentified person using Mr Ghafoor’s bank cards had made dozens of transactions on his accounts through ATMs in the Emirates, the statement said.
“The case reflects the extensive legal cooperation of the UAE and the US to combat transnational financial crimes,” the embassy statement said, noting that President Biden, who had killed UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, two days after the arrest of Mr Ghafoor, commented on the country’s efforts to combat financial crime.
Ghafoor’s supporters have questioned the Emirati version of events, noting that the Emirati authorities never informed him of the case against him, tried and sentenced him without his knowledge and presence, and failed to give him an opportunity to defend himself before being convicted.
Nada Rashwan reporting contributed.