SANAA, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Bailed U.S. businessman Zack
Shahin, who fled the United Arab Emirates for Yemen, may be
deported to the United States as the UAE has not yet requested
his extradition, Yemeni officials said on Thursday.
Yemeni authorities have contacted U.S. embassy officials to
discuss handing Shahin to the United States, a Yemeni security
source and a government official both told Reuters.
"According to the law, there are two choices: To return him
to the country where he came from, in this case the UAE, or the
country of which he is a passport holder," the security source
said, declining to be identified. There was no deadline for
Shahin's deportation, he added.
But neither the Yemeni foreign ministry nor Interpol in
Yemen had received any extradition requests for Shahin from the
UAE, officials there told Reuters.
"We have not received any message from the UAE on this
subject," a foreign ministry official said, also on condition of
anonymity.
The U.S. embassy in Sanaa declined to comment. A spokesman
for Shahin's U.S-based legal team said he could not immediately
comment. A spokesman for Dubai's public prosecutor could not
immediately be reached.
Shahin, the former chief executive of Dubai real estate
developer Deyaar, was jailed in 2008 for embezzlement.
He went on hunger strike in May and was freed on $1.4
million bail last month after U.S. authorities expressed
concerns about his health. He then slipped into Yemen after a
car trip across Oman from the UAE last week and is now in Yemeni
custody.
Smuggling and undocumented travel are common across Yemen's
porous desert borders.
(Additional reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi and
Praveen Menon in Dubai; Editing by Amran Abocar and Richard
Meares)