The United Nations said it would discuss the alleged detention of Princess Latifa al-Maktoum, the daughter of the ruler of Dubai, with the UAE after a series of videos of the 35-year-old apparently taken in captivity was broadcast as part of a documentary about the CBS News partner network BBC News.
Latifa al-Maktoum has not been heard by anyone outside of Dubai for months, and she has reportedly been locked up in a villa by her family for more than two years, BBC News reported.
In the videos, recorded for several months on a phone smuggled to al-Maktoum by her boyfriend, the princess speaks directly to the camera and explains how she was ‘taken hostage’.
‘All windows are closed with bars. I can’t open any windows. There are five policemen outside and two policewomen in the house, and I can’t even go out to get some fresh air, ”she said.
“Every day I worry about my safety and my life”
Al-Maktoum has reportedly been held in prison since 2018, when she tried to flee Dubai to India with the aim of eventually seeking political asylum in the United States.
Reuters
In footage filmed before trying to escape, she said her family had control over her passport and that she had not been allowed to leave the UAE since 2000.
She was intercepted trying to slip out of the country on a yacht with her friend, Tiina Jauhiainen, and was forcibly injected with sedative and taken back to Dubai, she says in the videos.
Jauhiainen was brought back to the country separately and held in a detention center for two weeks.
“Every day I worry about my safety and my life. I don’t really know if I’m going to survive this situation,” al-Maktoum said in one of the phone videos. “The police have threatened me that I will be in prison all my life and that I will never see the sun again … I just want to be free.”
“The situation is getting more desperate every day”
After her own release from prison, and with no news about Latifa, Jauhiainen founded the lobby group “Free Latifa”.
In 2019, with increasing international pressure, former UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson traveled to Dubai to seek evidence that al-Maktoum was still alive.
The two met at the home of another member of the royal family, al-Maktoum’s stepmother, Princess Haya, who later fled the country herself with her two children. It was the only time that al-Maktoum was allowed to leave her villa during her imprisonment, she said in the videos.
Princess Haya told Robinson that Latifa had mental health problems.
“I was deceived at first by my good friend Princess Haya, because she was being tricked. Haya started to explain that Latifa had a pretty serious bipolar problem. And they said to me in a very convincing way, ‘We don’t want to not that Latifa is going through any more trauma, ” said Robinson.
The UK government is facing calls to become involved in al-Maktoum’s case as her father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, has strong connections in the UK and visits regularly.
“I don’t know what they plan to do with me. I really don’t know. So the situation is getting more desperate every day, and I’m really, really tired of this now,” said al-Maktoum in one of her videos.