UAE Court Denies Extradition of Top Belgian Fugitive Nordin El Hajjioui

In total, three extradition requests for Nordin El Hajjioui to Belgium have been rejected by a Dubai court, reports Het Laatste Nieuws. Information confirmed by the Belgian ambassador to the cabinet of the Minister of Justice, Van Quickenborne. "We will have to examine the judgment, indicates his spokesperson. We will certainly not stop there and we will ask for explanations on these court decisions". Belgium had signed an extradition agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in December last year, while the extradition requests had been made for more than a year. "These requests are prior to the signing of the treaty," the spokesperson specifies.

The Antwerp justice system had sentenced Nordin El Hajjioui, 34, in 2016 to 40 months suspended sentence for drug trafficking. However, the drug trafficker fled to Dubai, where he was briefly arrested. He will pay a bail of 10,000 euros to regain his freedom. According to the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office, he was running cocaine smuggling operations in the port of Antwerp from the Emirati city.