Spain (Europe Brief News) Interpol has asked the Government of the United Arab Emirates
for the immediate extradition of Abdul Rahman El Assir, the Spanish-Lebanese arms
businessman, who helped Emeritus escape the country, according to El País on Wednesday.
The reason for said request corresponds to the two international search and arrest warrants that weigh on him. It is an arrest warrant with a red note, that is, to proceed with his extradition.
El Assir, a well-known arms dealer, accompanied Juan Carlos I in Abu Dhabi. As
eyewitnesses have pointed out to the newspaper, king Emeritus has received a visit from El
Assir in the private complex he resides in since he left Spain in the summer of 2020.
In the first information, the Spanish newspaper had announced that an international search
and arrest warrant weighs on El Assir since he is on the run from Spain, where he did not appear at a trial in which he is accused of defrauding 14.7 million to the Spanish Treasury.
El Assir eluded the Spanish courts in 2018
The arms dealer had to have appeared for an appointment in a court of the Provincial Court
of Madrid on October 4, 2018, as the Spanish newspaper pointed out that El Assir were unknown.
That day, the Spanish-Lebanese alleged that he was ill in Switzerland and managed to
delay the oral hearing for a month. Subsequently, he also did not appear on December 5 or
February 5 and, finally, on March 5. As confirmed by an official source from the
Prosecutor’s Office to El País, “the order [for search and arrest] was issued and is still in force.”
A pending case in France
The other search for order and international arrest against the arms dealer is motivated by
the pending case with the French justice where he was convicted in absentia for Karachigate, a corruption and arms sales scandal in Pakistan.
As reported by the same media outlet, he has been persecuted since mid-2020 for a financial crime and against property related to commissions for the sale of submarines and the financing of the campaign of the presidency of the French republic of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. According to the Swiss media Bergen Zeitung, El Assir also has 2.2 million in taxes with Switzerland.
Also read: Uncertainty over number hospitalized covid patients in Holland
