Asim Ghafoor once represented Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered by Saudi agents in Press Release Format. He was arrested this month in Dubai.
Pressure is mounting in the United Arab Emirates to release a Virginia lawyer who represented Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist who was murdered and dismembered by Saudi agents in 2018.
On Thursday, members of Congress and a group of Muslim organizations held two separate news conferences to draw attention to the case of lawyer Asim Ghafoor, who was arrested this month. The UAE said on July 16 that it had detained him after convicting him in absentia on tax evasion and money laundering charges, adding that it had investigated Ghafoor, a U.S. citizen, at the request of the United States.
But two days later, a State Department spokesman said Washington had not asked the UAE to arrest him.
“We certainly did not request, we did not seek, the arrest of Mr. Ghafoor,” said spokesman Ned Price.
Supporters of Mr. Ghafoor and his congressional apologists said his abrupt arrest raised questions about whether the UAE — an oil-rich US ally in the Persian Gulf that works closely with Saudi Arabia — was holding him for political reasons, such as his relationship with Mr. Khashoggi. They said Mr. Ghafoor was unaware of the charges against him before he was arrested.
Advocates said Mr. Ghafoor was charged, tried and convicted without his knowledge or opportunity to defend himself, calling his arrest arbitrary and unjust.
Mr. Price said “there is no indication at this time that his arrest is related to his relationship with Jamal Khashoggi.” But he said the United States had asked the Emirati for more information.
Ghafoor and Khashoggi founded a human rights group called Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, to denounce human rights abuses in the UAE and call on the United States to end arms sales to the country.
Representative Don Beyer Jr., a Virginia Democrat, said at a news conference on Thursday that the treatment of Ghafoor by the UAE government was “unacceptable.”
“My colleagues and I are deeply concerned that he will not be able to adequately defend himself against the unproven allegations against him to this day,” Beyer said. He appeared alongside three other members of Congress: Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas; Eric Swalwell, D-California; and Jennifer Wexton, D-Virginia, who represents Ghafoor’s district.
The representatives urged the UAE to release Ghafoor on bail and allow him to see a lawyer in time for a hearing scheduled for Monday.
They said Ghafoor had been unable to reach his lawyer, while U.S. consular officials had also been unable to reach him in recent days.
A coalition of Muslim nonprofits and mosques said Thursday that they were calling on Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to explain whether the UAE had notified the Justice Department in advance of the case against Ghafoor. The Justice Department declined to comment on whether it had sought Emirati help in investigating Ghafoor.
“We demand that the UAE immediately and unconditionally release Asim,” Oussama Jammal, secretary general of the Council of American Islamic Organizations, said at a separate news conference Thursday outside the Justice Department in Washington. He called Mr. Ghafoor “a civil rights lawyer who has defended the rights of others throughout his career.”
