Jay Slater: Action drug dealer pal of teen took when he went missing revealed – World News

A convicted drug dealer who booked the Airbnb accommodation where Jay Slater stayed in the remote village of Masca joined the hunt for the teenager, it’s emerged.

Ayub Qassim, 31, said he invited Jay back to the holiday apartment after going to a rave in the south of Tenerife before he disappeared on June 17. He and another British man spoke to the Spanish police and he extended his stay by an extra day to discuss the disappearance of the teenager.

During this period, Qassim said he wanted “to do the geezer a favour” and insisted he “hadn’t even done anything” to harm the apprentice bricklayer. He shed light on Jay’s last known hours, insisting their was no quarrel between them and revealing what he was doing at the mountain home in the first place.

Spanish police quizzed Qassim and the unnamed friend he was travelling with, and subsequently determined them to be “irrelevant” to the investigation. He told The Mail he had let the 19-year-old man stay at his because he “had nowhere else to go” and claimed all his friends “had left him”. Qassim stated he knew Jay through friends and said he wouldn’t have brought him back to his rented cottage if he didn’t know him and said he was doing Jay a “favour.”

He said: “If I’d fallen out with him would he even come to mine? There were no problems. You’ve seen the last images of him with his red blanket around him. I don’t know if he had beef elsewhere because I don’t know him that well, I only know him through friends. I’m doing the geezer a favour and now my face is all over the news. It’s a bit mental. I haven’t even done anything.”

Qassim remained tight-lipped over his thoughts on exactly what has happened to Jay, and simply said: “Everyone knows each other. I’m not going to slander anyone. He’s a cool guy, Jay. He ain’t got a problem with me, I haven’t got a problem with him or his mates. We just all talk to each other and everything was sweet.”

After speaking to Spanish police about Jay’s disappearance, Qassim returned from the trip to his family’s flat in Barking, East London. He has since been identified as the ringleader of a London-based crime gang who imported heroin and crack cocaine to Cardiff.