Surghar Daily
A SUSPECTED Midland drug kingpin has been linked to the family of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.
Robert Dawes, 39, from Nottingham, was extradited to Spain from Dubai last month to face charges connected to a massive cocaine ring which allegedly flooded Britain with Class A drugs.
While Spanish prosecutors prepare to try the Midland man for smuggling and distributing narcotics, reports of links have emerged between Dawes and a nephew of President Karzai.
Afghanistan has a reputation as one of the world’s largest producers of heroin, and the US has estimated that up to $10 million a day leaves the country for Dubai, which has acted as a money laundering centre for Afghan druglords in recent years.
Jamil Karzai, a nephew of the Afghan president, was allegedly seen at Dawes’ offices meeting the suspected kingpin’s right-hand man, Manchester-born Raphael Nasr.
“Raphael is our best friend and is kind of family now,” Karzai allegedly told an undercover investigator. “We can do good business there. If we all get together we can have something really good.”
Asked about Dawes, Karzai allegedly said: “I’ve spoken with him, yeah, I’ve spoken with him, I think, a couple of times.” Meanwhile, Nasr told the investigator, who was posing as a broker for a client looking at business opportunities in Afghanistan, that he had strong links to Jamil Karzai.
The Afghan, who heads the Youth Solidarity Party, was an MP in Kabul until losing his seat in 2010.
When later confronted, Nasr admitted that he was friends with members of the Karzai family and Robert Dawes, but denied he was involved in any criminality. Karzai denied that he knew Nasr or Dawes.
In a statement released last week, the Spanish Civil Guard described Dawes as “the boss of an important English drug trafficking organisation”.
Arrested
He was arrested after a joint operation between the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the Spanish Civil Guard’s Central Operative Unit in Madrid, and Belgian police.
A further 22 people were taken into custody as part of the probe, nine of them in the UK, eight in Spain, four in Belgium and one in the United Arab Emirates.
Officers seized millions of pounds worth of drugs, including more than five tons of cannabis resin, 100 kilos of heroin and 210 kilos of cocaine. They also recovered four firearms and £90,000 in cash.Dawes was extradited from Dubai to Spain after completing a jail sentence imposed in 2008 for money laundering. Spanish prosecutors say he was able to continue running his operation from his jail cell in the United Arab Emirates.
He fled the UK for Spain nearly ten years ago and left his base in Mijas Costa for Dubai in 2007 after a number of his alleged associates were arrested.
Police in Britain have swooped on members of Dawes’ family, including his brother John and father, Arthur. Both were jailed in 2005 for drugs offences and money laundering.
Dawes has previously been named by SOCA as “a highly significant international criminal” wanted in the UK and other European countries.
He is under investigation in Holland for the 2002 murder of teacher Gerard Meesters, who was shot outside his home in Groningen.
British police are also said to want to interview him about the unsolved murder of father-of-two David Draycott, who was shot at his home in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, in 2002.
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