Abu Dhabi’s money-laundering court also ordered Asim Ghafoor, a US national, to pay a fine of more than $800,000 (£675,000) due to his conviction in absentia, the UAE’s state-run WAM news agency reported. The UAE’s state-run newspaper The National said he would be deported to the US after completing his sentence. The UAE described Ghafoor’s arrest as a coordinated move with the US to “combat transnational crimes”. State media reported that US authorities had sought the UAE’s help in an investigation into his alleged tax evasion and suspicious money transfers. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST The prison sentence was announced a day after the Washington-based human rights watchdog Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) raised the alarm over the arrest of Ghafoor, one of its board members, at Dubai International Airport. Dawn said Ghafoor, a Virginia-based civil rights lawyer who had represented Khashoggi and his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, had traveled to Istanbul on Thursday to attend a wedding when plainclothes security agents arrested him and sent him to a detention center in Abu Dhabi before he could change planes. Ghafoor had no known case against him and had passed through Dubai without incident less than a year ago, DAWN reported. The US Embassy in Abu Dhabi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
