Asif Hafeez extradited to US after fighting for six years

LONDON: Pakistani national Muhammad Asif Hafeez has been extradited to the United States from London’s high-security Belmarsh prison to face charges of alleged drugs and narcotics importation after fighting a US extradition warrant for six years.

The family and lawyers of Hafeez have alleged the abuse of process by the US and UK authorities, accusing the UK government of illegally sending Hafeez to the US authorities while his lawyers were preparing to file an application against the unanimous decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) at the ECHR and also at the CCHR’s Grand Chamber.

Sources at Britain’s Home Office have confirmed to Geo News that Hafeez, the former Pakistani gold trader from Lahore who worked out of Dubai, has been sent to the US after he had exhausted all his legal options and that he is now detained at a high-security prison in New York.

While Hafeez put up a long fight, events unfolded quickly over the last month. Last month, the European Court of Human Rights rejected his application regarding life without parole and declared it inadmissible. His lawyers applied at the UK High Court’s administrative section to reopen the extradition case on new grounds but this appeal was rejected by the British Court on 26th of April 2023.

Family sources said that Hafeez’s European lawyer Emmanuel Ruchat was preparing a revision application to the ECtHR and at the same time his UK lawyer Sandip Patel had written to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on April 28, 2023, to inform them that the revision application is being prepared but the CPS and the Home Office ordered Hafeez’s immediate extradition.

“Hafeez was denied justice and he has been taken out illegally. Upon receiving a negative response from the UK authorities, Hafeez’s European attorney prepared an application and the ECtHR allowed time to submit a full application till May 26, 2023, but Hafeez got extradited prior to that submission,” said a family member while speaking to Geo News.

Asif Hafeez was detained in London in 2017 by Scotland Yard on a US request for six years. The former trained commercial pilot has been described as a “big boss”, “the Sultan” and the “number one in the world” for heroin and hashish in the US charges. He was charged with conspiracy to import heroin into the US; conspiracy to import methamphetamine and hashish into the US; and aiding and abetting the manufacture/distribution of heroin knowing and intending that it would be imported into the US.

Hafeez has denied all charges, saying he is a victim of a wider US conspiracy. His lawyers had presented evidence in the court that Hafeez actually worked as a credible informant for the spy agencies and law enforcement of the USA, UK, Pakistan and UAE and helped bust several drug import shipments. Hafeez said he didn’t want to be tried in the US because there was a real risk that he would be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The US government intensified its efforts to take Hafeez out after snatching Kenya’s Akasha brothers — Baktash Akasha Abdalla, Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, Bollywood star Mamta Kulkarni’s husband Vicky Goswami and Ghulam Hussein — from Kenyan soil in January 2017 in violation of the local court orders. Since then Indian national Vicky Goswami has turned into a witness against the Pakistani national.

Akasha brothers, who have been convicted and imprisoned in the US, have refused to indict Hafeez, maintaining that he didn’t do any drugs dealing with them and that the charges against him are false and fabricated.

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Kamran Faridi has said in a statement to the lawyers of Hafeez that his handlers at the FBI asked him many times to trap him while he was working on an entrapment mission targeting Karachi businessman Jabir Motiwala and Dawood Ibrahim.

Milesh Tareja, a veteran spy who has worked for both the US and Australian agencies, has said in a written statement that his US handlers spoke to him about Hafeez and about Pakistani matters.

Court papers show that Hafeez had been under the US scanner since at least 2004. Ommer Faruke Kolia, a British national of Indian origin from Leicester, detailed his story in a written witness statement on 19 February 2018 sent to the lawyers of Hafeez in London. Ommer Faruke Kolia died in highly mysterious circumstances four months later on June 21, 2018.

Faridi, who worked as a spy for the US authorities for over two decades, has also provided a statement to the lawyers of Hafeez. He says in the statement that his bosses at the FBI and DEA would often ask him to trap Hafeez.

The American government says it has secretly recorded statements of Baktash, Goswami and Hussain confirming Hafeez's participation in the heroin deal and his 2015 text message to Goswami showing Hafeez was concerned about US law enforcement targeting him based on his participation in the transaction following the arrests in Kenya of Baktash, Ibrahim, Goswami, and Hussain.

Hafeez’s family said they don’t expect any justice in the US. The US govt assured the UK courts that Hafeez’s fundamental rights will be protected in US custody.