One of the men who Jay Slater spent his final hours with has spoken out six months after the British teenager died in Tenerife.
Ayub Qassim, 31, drove with Jay back to an Airbnb after he had left a music festival in Playa de las Américas on June 17.
Now, Qassim, from Barking, east London, has spoken about Jay’s death in a two-hour podcast with The Central Club.
Qassim had been jailed almost a decade ago for plotting to supply Wales with Class A drugs.
Speaking to the podcast, he was adamant that he had nothing to do with the teenager’s death, months after he was already cleared.
Qassim said: ‘The moment he [Jay] said “I’m going” and I shut my door, that’s me out of this. Sorry I couldn’t be your foreign suspect, I apologise, it’s not me for this whole situation.’
Qassim said he, Jay, and another man called ate a kebab before they went back to the Airbnb around 6.45am.
After giving Jay a phone charger, blanket, towel and cigarettes, the three men went to sleep.
Jay had apparently become worried in the morning about Qassim and his friend, he said, with the Lancashire teenager texting his friends: ‘Are these lads sweet?’
Qassim added: Obviously going something through in his head.’
Around 8am, Jay asked Ofelia Medina Hernandez, owner of the holiday let, when the next bus south to Los Cristianos was.
Jay left and began the lengthy walk back to Tenerife, according to witnesses, before he went missing.
Nearly a month later, his body was discovered in an ‘inaccessible area’. Jay had died from an ‘accidental fall’.
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