CAIRO – Since 2018, when Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum, one of the daughters of the ruler of Dubai, disappeared after trying to escape her privileged but suffocating life in a royal palace, her friends have insisted that she was dragged against her home was will and was kept indefinitely.
On Tuesday, they provided video evidence.
Contrary to her family’s insistence that she has enjoyed quiet time with them at home for the past two years, Sheikha Latifa says in a series of videos she has released, pleading that she is a hostage and fearing for her life.
“Every day I worry about my safety in my life. I do not really know if I will survive this situation, ‘Sheikha Latifa said in a self-recording video, according to a transcript provided by a lawyer working on her case, David Haigh.
“The police are threatening me that they will take me outside and shoot me if I do not cooperate with them,” she said. “They also threatened me that I would be in jail all my life and I would never see the sun again.”
The sheikha’s case began sparking outrage outside the United Arab Emirates in 2018 after reports emerged in international media that she was trying to flee a yacht from Dubai, which was run by a Frenchman who claimed she was a former spy was, only for a team of Indian and Emirate commandos. to seize the vessel, keep everyone on board and fly her back to Dubai.
In a video recorded before her flight, she said she wanted to leave due to the restrictions her father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, placed on her: she was banned from traveling outside Dubai. the city-state that ruled her father.
After the 2018 episode, Sheikha Latif was again virtually not seen in public.
For a large part of the time, however, she secretly recorded videos from inside the villa where she was being held, Mr. Haigh said and usually locked herself in a bathroom, the only place where she had privacy. After first communicating with friends via letters, she switches to a phone that friends have smuggled to her, and regularly sends updates between early 2019 and late 2020, Mr. Haigh said.
According to the transcripts, she said in it that she was being held in a villa that had been effectively converted into a prison, with windows not closed. According to her, five police officers stood guard and two female officers inside.
Her attempted flight in 2018 was cut short, Sheikha Latifa said when commandos stormed the yacht, threw her to the deck, zipped up as she tried to ward them off and inject sedatives. After being taken back to Dubai by helicopter and a private plane, she was interrogated for two weeks and detained in solitary confinement in a prison near the airport.
Some of the new videos were first published by the BBC on Tuesday. Although they could not be independently confirmed, Mr. Haigh said in an interview that he had prepared them for release. Her family could not be reached for comment.
Before Tuesday, the only recent glimpse of Sheikha Latifa came in December 2018 after she was brought back to Dubai. Her family released photos of her uncomfortably with Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland and former United Nations human rights commissioner.
Me. Robinson said at the time that she believes the sheikh is mentally concerned and recovering in the care of her family. But she has now told the BBC that she felt she was ‘deceived’ when photos of what she assumed was a private lunch were made public.
Sheikha Latifa said in one of the videos that Princess Haya, one of her wife’s wives, would come after lunch, but that she did not know who Mrs Robinson was, what the lunch was for, or why her stepmother insisted on to take. a photo of her with me. Robinson. She just agreed ‘to be polite’, she said.
What the then comments of Mrs. As far as Robinson is concerned, Sheikha Latifa said in one video that “statements about my fact that I am with my family or receiving treatment or recovery are a lie.”
Her family has repeatedly insisted she calls ‘propaganda’, she said.
‘They wanted me to make a video and say I’m happy and volunteer here. And I refused, ”she said in one video, according to one transcript.
Princess Haya also supported her stepdaughter’s version of events. In court documents filed in Britain last year after Princess left Dubai with her young children and filed for divorce from the sheikh, she said Sheikha Latifa and one of the sheikh’s sisters had been severely punished in the past for trying has to escape.
By the end of 2020, the videos of Sheikha Latifa stopped coming, Haigh said, asking him and Tiina Jauhiainen, a Finnish instructor for capoeira who accompanied the sheikha on the hunt, to release it.
They are also planning to land as the United Nations Working Group on Forced or Involuntary Disappearance is holding a session on the sheikha case.