Asim Ghafoor, a board member of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), was arrested by United Arab Emirates (UAE) security personnel at the Dubai International Airport due to what appears to be politically motivated in absentia conviction.
After being detained at an airport, an American lawyer who represented the assassinated writer Jamal Khashoggi is sentenced to a three-year prison in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
According to the UAE state media WAM, Asim Ghafoor, a US citizen and civil rights lawyer based in Virginia, was found guilty of tax evasion and money laundering in connection with a tax evasion operation in the US.
Two days after his detention at the Dubai airport, the Abu Dhabi Money Laundering Court sentenced him to three years in prison, a fine of three million dirhams (£689,000), and deportation from the UAE.
Who Is Asim Ghafoor?
Asim Ghafoor is a Civil rights attorney in DC. With over twenty years of experience counseling clients and policymakers on a range of legal and political matters, he manages a private law firm.
He frequently discusses politics, law enforcement, and world affairs in interviews with the media and at conferences and seminars.
He was involved in numerous high-profile cases involving terrorism and national security.
Mr. Ghafoor, who had defended Khashoggi, was taken into custody on Thursday in Dubai while en route to Istanbul for a family wedding.
He is being held in an Abu Dhabi detention facility on suspicion of violating the terms of an in absentia money laundering conviction, according to the human
rights organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
According to reports, Mr. Ghafoor was unaware of any prior convictions. The human rights organization, of which Mr. Ghafoor is a co-founder and board member, requested that Mr. Biden bring up the subject during his Saturday meeting with the president of the UAE in Saudi Arabia.
In the 1960s, Asim’s parents relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, after spending their formative years in Hyderabad, India.
His father was the founding member of the Islamic Society of North America, the largest Muslim group in the nation.
Sadly, he was just twelve years old when his father perished in a Saudi Airlines jet tragedy. He was brought up by a single mother alongside his two sisters. She relocated to Houston, Texas, to live with her sister.
He went to Alief Hastings High School and Olle Middle School. Asim’s mother pushed him and his brothers to get involved in the community from a young age.
He and his family were the anomalies at a period when few Muslim Americans were active in politics.
Civil Rights Attorney Asim Ghafoor Wikipedia Bio
Civil Rights Attorney Asim Ghafoor was born in Missouri and raised in Texas. Currently, he lives in Virginia and is a father of three children.
He is available on Twitter with an account @asimghaf.
He graduated from the University of Texas with both a BA and a JD. He worked as a summer intern for then-State Representative Ciro Rodriguez during his second summer at Texas Law.
Ciro Rodriguez, who represents Texas’s 23rd district in the San Antonio region, was elected to the U.S. Congress that November. He also worked as Congressman Ciro D. Rodriguez’s legislative assistant from 1997 to 2000.
In addition to federal courts in Washington, D.C., the Southern District of Texas, and Colorado, he is admitted to practice law in the state of Maryland.
Additionally, he is licensed in the D.C., 2nd, and 5th Circuits of the US Court of Appeals.
About two dozen businesses, nonprofit executives, and organizations were successfully exonerated of charges that they were complicit in the September 11 attacks by him.
Additionally, he represented the Republic of Sudan as legal counsel in the 9/11, African Embassy bombing, and USS Cole cases.
By facilitating communication between Islamic academics and representatives of the cartoonists in Copenhagen, Ghafoor played a crucial role in helping to diffuse
the Danish cartoon crisis of 2006.