EXCLUSIVE Fresh twist in Jay Slater inquest as 'missing' convicted drug dealer who was last person to see teen alive speaks out
The last person to see Jay Slater alive has told how he had no idea police wanted to speak to him to find out details of how the missing raver came to die.
An inquest into Slater's still unexplained death after going missing in Tenerife heard how police had been unable to find key witnesses - and the hearing was halted.
MailOnline later revealed that far from having vanished, one of the supposedly missing witnesses, Jay's friend Lucy Law, had simply gone on holiday back to Tenerife and was unaware she was wanted to testify at the inquest.
Today we can reveal a second witness cited by the coroner as being untraceable is also apparently happy to cooperate with the hearing but had not been told it was taking place.
That witness is Ayab Qassim from east London who was the last person to see Jay alive before he disappeared last summer - sparking a four week missing person manhunt culminating in his body being found in a remote ravine.
Qassim, a convicted drug dealer who gave tragic Jay Slater a lift home that day, told a remarkably similar story to Law's.
Posting on social media Qassim claimed he had no idea of last week's inquest at Preston Coroner's Court and insisted he would attend any future hearing.
He wrote: 'Regarding the inquest I did not know as of today, time and place now I am aware steps will be taken.'
And speaking of how he had been unfairly attacked for not attending, he added: 'Currently in the middle of a Matrix attack.
'It's coming from all sides suggest all the rats just calm down with the abuse and jibber jabber.'
His post this week is the first time Qassim has spoken publicly since January when he took part in a podcast interview about the case.
Qassim invited Jay who had been raving at a festival to go back to his AirBnB in Masca around half an hour from Los Cristianos on the holiday island hotspot of Tenerife last June.
Qassim, 31, and his pal Steve Roccas were the last two people to see raver Jay last summer as he vanished shortly after leaving their rental apartment.
The apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was found 29 days later at the bottom of a ravine.
Qassim was jailed nine years ago for being the mastermind of a sophisticated operation to flood Wales with class A drugs.
He was initially found at home by MailOnline last July and told us he had nothing to do with Jay's disappearance.
He insisted he had simply given him a left home after he had been left by his friends.
In his online interview in January he insisted he gave Jay a phone charger, a blanket, towel and some cigarettes before he went upstairs to bed while the teenager slept on the sofa.
Coroner Dr James Adeley had told last Thursday's hearing of the missing witnesses: 'We can't find them, they have stopped responding to phone calls,' adding: 'When drugs are involved in a death, the witnesses are less than forthcoming and do not wish to speak to the authorities.'
The failure of police to find witnesses last week prompted a desperate plea from the teenager's distraught mother Debbie Slater.
She said: 'I know you [the authorities] tried to locate them but how can we ever get any understanding ?
'We know he died, we know he had an accident. There's things that we want to question. We want these people to be sat in front of us.
'Something went wrong that day, he didn't come back. There's questions we need to ask.'
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