Rights group says UAE has detained U.S. lawyer who represented Khashoggi

United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities have detained Asim Ghafoor, a U.S. citizen and civil rights legal professional who beforehand served as a lawyer for slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, mentioned U.S.-based rights group DAWN of whose board Ghafoor is a member.

A senior U.S. administration official, when requested on Saturday by reporters concerning the detention, mentioned the United States was conscious, however couldn’t say whether or not President Joe Biden would increase the problem in deliberate bilateral talks with the UAE president on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Saudi Arabia.

“Certainly I think we have points on that about the importance of consular access and everything else,” the official mentioned, including “there’s no indication that it has anything to do with the Khashoggi issue”.

Saudi journalist Khashoggi was killed by Saudi brokers in 2018 on the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in an operation that U.S. intelligence says Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accredited. The prince denies involvement.

UAE authorities didn’t instantly reply on the weekend to a Reuters request for remark concerning Ghafoor’s detention.

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) mentioned in an announcement on Friday that Ghafoor, a civil rights legal professional based mostly in Virginia, was detained on July 14 at Dubai airport en path to Istanbul to attend a household marriage ceremony. It cited U.S. consular officers as saying he was being held in a detention facility in Abu Dhabi on fees associated to an in absentia conviction for cash laundering, however that Ghafoor said he had no data of any authorized matter towards him.

“We urge the Biden administration to secure the release of an arbitrarily detained American lawyer before agreeing to meet with the UAE’s leader MBZ (Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed) in Jeddah,” DAWN mentioned.

Biden has mentioned he would increase human rights throughout his journey.

Rights teams say the UAE has jailed a whole bunch of activists, lecturers and attorneys in unfair trails on broad fees. The UAE has rejected such accusations as baseless and says it’s dedicated to human rights beneath the nation’s charters.