A convicted drug dealer who was one of the last people to see Jay Slater has spoken out to deny his involvement in his death.
Ayub Qassim was one of two men who invited the 19-year-old back to an Airbnb rental property close to the remote village of Masca, Tenerife, in the early hours of June 17.
Jay, an apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, vanished during a holiday to the Spanish island on June 17. A huge search was launched for him, sparking worldwide media coverage.
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His body was eventually discovered near the village of Masca on July 15, not far from his last known location. A post-mortem examination found the teenager died of traumatic head injuries, consistent with a fall from height.
Qassim has now broken his silence in a two-hour interview on The Central Club podcast. As well as detailing his final moments with Jay, Qassim denied any involvement in his death.
“The moment he [Jay] said ‘I’m going, bro’ and I shut my door, that’s me out of this,” he said.
He added: “Sorry I couldn’t be your foreign suspect, I apologise, it’s not me for this whole situation.”
Sharing his story, Qassim revealed he had been left with “survivor’s guilt” but also found it “annoying” that he had offered Jay a lift home and felt a “told you so” moment after he went missing.
Qassim claimed that he, his friend Rocky and Jay went for a kebab before he drove the three of them back to the Airbnb at around 6.30am-6.45am.
He said he then gave Jay a phone charger, a blanket, a towel and some cigarettes before going upstairs to bed. Jay then went to sleep on the sofa.
Qassim said he had since been told that Jay was texting friends with concerns about being back at the Airbnb.
He explained: “From speaking to my friend, he messaged them during the night saying, “Are these lads sweet?” so he was obviously going something through in his head.
“My pal did say he messaged to say, ‘Is your pal alright upstairs’ and my guy said “Come off it, he is sweet”. That was about 10-20 minutes before he left. I do believe, there was a lot of texting back and forth.”
Qassim revealed how the Airbnb buzzer went off at around 8am but that Jay, who was downstairs, did not open the door because he was ‘s***ing it’.
Qassim opened the door to Ofelia Medina Hernandez, her husband and their adult son who asked him to move his car. He said Jay then told him that he was leaving and planned to catch a bus. Qassim said he offered to drop Jay off later, but he “just wanted to go”.
“I’m not going to be like ‘nah, you’re not going. You’re staying’. I’m just thinking ‘alright, cool’.”
He added: “If I would have held him there and said ‘no, you’re staying’, this would have turned into a different situation.”
After Jay was reported missing, Qassim and Rocky were interrogated by local authorities but were later dismissed as “irrelevant” to the case and permitted to leave for the UK.
Qassim was jailed for nine years in 2015 as the ringleader of a London-based gang dealing heroin and crack cocaine in Cardiff.
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