DUBAI/ABU DHABI: US businessman Zack Shahin, who was freed on bail in the United Arab Emirates last month after Washington expressed concern about his health, has fled the country for Yemen, where he was detained again, sources familiar with the matter said. The former chief executive of Dubai real estate developer Deyaar, in jail since 2008 over embezzlement charges, went on hunger strike in May and was released on $1.4 million bail.
The sources, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters that Shahin was smuggled out of the UAE and was then arrested in Yemen.
It was not clear when he left the UAE.
“Shahin is still being detained by the security apparatus,” a Yemeni security source, who declined to be named, said on Sunday. “We expect that the man will be deported to the UAE before the end of the week.”
The office of Dubai public prosecutions declined to comment. Neither Shahin’s US-based lawyer nor officials at the US embassy in Abu Dhabi were immediately available for comment.
The former executive’s flight may embarrass US authorities who had exerted pressure on the UAE to resolve Shahin’s case, especially after he went on hunger strike. There have been hearings on his case in Dubai, but no judgment.
Inw May, four other expatriates jailed in Dubai said they were among a group of prisoners who had gone on hunger strike to protest against lengthy prison sentences handed down to most of them for financial crimes.
The men, most of them real estate developers and other businessmen who worked in Dubai during its economic boom, fell into debt when the emirate’s property bubble burst after the 2008 global credit crisis.
Bailed US businessman detained in Yemen, again
Bailed US businessman detained in Yemen, again
Syria Kurds chief says ‘all efforts’ being made to salvage deal with Damascus
- Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal
- The two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism
DAMASCUS: Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said Thursday that “all efforts” were being made to prevent the collapse of talks on an agreement with Damascus to integrate his forces into the central government.
The remarks came days after Aleppo saw deadly clashes between the two sides before their respective leaders ordered a ceasefire.
In March, Abdi signed a deal with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to merge the Kurds’ semi-autonomous administration into the government by year’s end, but differences have held up its implementation.
Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal, adding in a statement that the two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism, and pledging further meetings with Damascus.
Downplaying the year-end deadline, he said the deal “did not specify a time limit for its ending or for the return to military solutions.”
He added that “all efforts are being made to prevent the collapse of this process” and that he considered failure unlikely.
Abdi also repeated the SDF’s demand for decentralization, which has been rejected by Syria’s Islamist authorities, who took power after ousting longtime ruler Bashar Assad last year.
Turkiye, an important ally of Syria’s new leaders, sees the presence of Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat.
In Damascus this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stressed the importance of the Kurds’ integration, having warned the week before that patience with the SDF “is running out.”
The SDF control large swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and with the support of a US-led international coalition, were integral to the territorial defeat of the Daesh group in Syria in 2019.
Syria last month joined the anti-IS coalition and has announced operations against the jihadist group in recent days.
