Mohammed Al Maktoum, daughter of the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, was last seen publicly in March 2018 aboard a yacht off the coast of India before an incursion of the Indian and Emirate forces brought her back to Dubai. , according to two people who had helped plan his escape.
It was his second failed attempt to flee abroad after before attempting to leave the UAE in 2002 as a teenager.
In a video clip, obtained by BBC Panorama and provided to CNN ahead of the documentary ‘The Missing Princess’ which will be broadcast on Tuesday night, Princess Latifa says: “I am a hostage. This villa has become in prison. All the windows are closed, I can’t open any windows … I’ve been alone, isolated. No access to medical help, no trial, no charges, nothing. ”
CNN has not independently verified the videos or the current whereabouts of Latifa. CNN has contacted the Dubai government for comment.
Princess Latifa herself secretly recorded the videos on a mobile phone while hiding in a locked bathroom, according to the BBC. The documentary says that about a year after Latifa’s return to Dubai, her friend Tiina Jauhiainen was contacted by someone who helped her secretly reconnect with her.
Jauhiainen managed to get a phone to Latifa and since then the princess has recorded many video messages “describing her captivity in a villa turned into a prison with the windows closed,” according to a BBC press release .
“BBC Panorama has independently verified the details of where Latifa was held hostage. She was protected by about 30 police officers, working in rotation, both inside and outside the town. The location is just a few meters from the beach. It is not known if it is still there, “the press release said.
In another video shown in the documentary Latifa says: “I have been here for more than a year in prison. There is no access to medical help, no trial, no charges, nothing … Every day I am worried about the my safety and the police are threatening me not to see the sun again. I’m not sure here. ”
Jauhiainen explains in the documentary that his friend is very worried about him: “She is so pale that she has not seen the sunlight for months. She can basically go from her room to the kitchen and go back.”
Robinson paid the visit at the request of the ruling family, according to a statement the UAE mission in Geneva sent to the Office of Special Procedures of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “The documents respond to and dismiss the false allegations that have been made about His Highness, providing evidence that he lives and lives with his family in Dubai,” the statement said.
However, in the BBC Panorama episode, Robinson tells a different story of his controversial encounter with Latifa in 2018.
“I was initially deceived by my good friend, Princess Haya, because she was deceived. Haya began to explain that Latifa had a rather serious bipolar problem. And they told me, in a very convincing way, ‘we don’t “I don’t want Latifa going through any other trauma” … I didn’t know how to address someone who was bipolar about their trauma. I didn’t really want to talk to her and increase the trauma during a good lunch, ”Robinson says in a program clip.
Princess Haya fled Dubai to London with her two children for the sheikh in 2019. The princess, who was the sheikh’s sixth wife and is not Latifa’s mother, later filed a case in London High Court. to seek custody of his own two children, aged nine and 13, fearing that they too would be abducted.
Last year, a judge in the family division of the London High Court ruled that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum carried out a “campaign of fear and intimidation” against Princess Haya.
The court determined that the sheikh organized kidnappings of two of his daughters on three occasions, including one in the historic British city of Cambridge and Princess Latifa, in international waters off the coast of India.
Andrew McFarlane, the UK’s oldest family judge, established that Sheika Shamsa, one of the daughters of another woman’s sheikh, fled her family in the summer of 2000 while visiting the UK. . She was later abducted and forced into a car in Cambridge by men who worked for her father, before being driven to Sheikh’s properties. There, she was flown by helicopter to Deauville, France, and then on a plane back to Dubai.
The other daughter, Latifa, had twice tried to escape from her Emirati family, but was forced to return, once in 2002 from Dubai’s border with Oman, and in 2018 “by an armed attack at sea” in international waters off the coast of India. , found the judge.
“With respect to both Shamsa and Latifa, it is claimed that after their return to custody of the father’s family they have been deprived of their liberty,” the sentence said, which held the claim to be true.
CNN reported at the time that Sheikh Mohammed – the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates – said the court’s assessment was a one-sided account.
“This case concerns highly personal and private issues related to our children. A call was made to protect the best interests and well-being of children. The result does not protect my children from media attention. just like other children in family proceedings The UK is protected, ”it said in a statement issued by its representatives.
“As head of government, I was unable to participate in the court’s fact-finding process. This has led to the publication of a ‘fact-finding’ trial which inevitably only tells one side of the story. I urge the media to respect the privacy of our children and not to enter their lives in the UK. ”