PRINCESSES AND PRISONERS IN DUBAI

Embarrassing judgment for the city-state of the Gulf, which takes care of its image as a large international financial center and a luxury paradise for tourists. According to British justice, which ruled on Thursday, the emir of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed ben Rached al-Maktoum, 70, ordered the abduction of two of his daughters and "intimidated" one of his wives to the point of force her to flee to the United Kingdom.

It is a London judge who made his conclusions on this case worthy of an action film, with leaks in a boat, kidnappings in a helicopter and drugged and locked up princesses.

Justice was indeed brought to rule on two episodes of the past which had fueled the chronicle: the fate of two girls, Shamsa and Latifa, that the emir had with another wife.

According to the judge, Sheikh Mohammed ben Rached al-Maktoum "sponsored and orchestrated" their abduction. In 2018, Latifa al-Maktoum, 32, announced in a video posted on Youtube that she wanted to flee her country.

It's on the verge of tears, Latifa said she was "tortured" and "imprisoned for three years" by her father after a first escape attempt when she was only a teenager in 2002.

It had been published after the failure of this attempt, on board a sailboat boarded by the Indian Navy. The princess has not since appeared publicly. The government in Dubai had finally confirmed that the princess had been "brought back" to her family and that she was "well" .

At just 18 years old, her sister Shamsa , who was born in 1981, also tried to flee her father in 2000 while she was on vacation in England. According to Latifa's account, the girl was found after two months on the run, "drugged", brought back to Dubai and "locked up".

According to the court, Princess Shamsa had fled in 2000, when she was 19 years old, the family home located in Surrey, south of London, before being kidnapped in Cambridge by men working for her father and returned from force in Dubai.

When investigating the alleged abduction of Princess Shamsa in 2001 and 2017, the evidence available to the Cambridgeshire police "did not go any further," police said in a statement. from this region north of London.

London judge says she received information about her return, citing an email saying she was reportedly abducted by four gunmen in Cambridge, "two injections and a handful of pills" and taken by helicopter to an airplane who transported her to Dubai. She has not been seen in public since.

A legal battle still pits Mohammed ben Rached al-Maktoum, 70, who is also head of the government of the United Arab Emirates, with his sixth wife, Princess Haya of Jordan, 45, who fled to England with his two children.




Kate White for DayNewsWorld