UN rights physique to “raise” lacking Dubai princess with UAE

The United Nations’ human rights physique mentioned Wednesday it should search data from the United Arab Emirates a few daughter of Dubai’s highly effective ruler after she mentioned in video messages that she was being imprisoned in a closely guarded villa.
Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum tried to flee the rich Gulf state in 2018 however was detained by commandos in a ship off India. She had not been heard from till Tuesday, when the BBC’s Panorama investigative programme broadcast video messages from the Sheikha.
In the movies, which seem to have been recorded covertly, the 35-year-old princess says she is “worried about my safety and my life.” “I don’t really know if I’m going to survive this situation,” she says in one of many movies. The BBC mentioned they had been recorded over months on a telephone she secretly acquired a few yr after her seize.
Marcus Essabri, a cousin who lives in England, instructed the BBC that the movies stopped about six months in the past and there had been no phrase from Latifa since then.
“I fear they caught her with the phone and now I am fearful for her safety,” he mentioned.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights mentioned it will “raise these new developments with the UAE. Other parts of the UN human rights system with relevant mandates may also become involved once they have analysed the new material or received specific allegations,” spokesman Rupert Colville instructed the BBC.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab referred to as the movies very distressing and mentioned he supported a UN investigation.
Raab mentioned Britain was involved, however prompt there was little the federal government may do as a result of Latifa is just not a UK nationwide.
Sheikh Mohammed and the Dubai royal courtroom have mentioned Latifa is protected within the loving care of her household. The UAE authorities’s Dubai Media Office didn’t reply to a request for remark from The Associated Press.
In 2018, the AP reported how a good friend and an ex-French spy helped Sheikha Latifa escape by boat, solely to be captured off India.
The dramatic escape try and its aftermath intruded into the fastidiously managed picture maintained by the household of Latifa’s father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
Sheikh Mohammed, who guidelines Dubai and likewise serves because the prime minister and vice chairman within the hereditarily dominated UAE, is believed to have a number of dozen youngsters from a number of wives. Some of his little kids determine prominently in native media and on-line, however others are not often seen. Sheikha Latifa was extensively recognized for her love of skydiving previous to 2018.
Sheikh Mohammed’s household life once more grew to become a public matter in 2020. Then, a British choose dominated that the sheikh had performed a marketing campaign of concern and intimidation towards his estranged spouse and ordered the kidnapping of two of his daughters, one in every of them Sheikha Latifa. The ruling got here in a High Court custody battle between Sheikh Mohammed and UK-based estranged spouse Princess Haya, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan.
Sheikh Mohammed is the founding father of the profitable Godolphin horse-racing steady and is on pleasant phrases with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. In 2019, he acquired a trophy from the queen after one in every of his horses gained a race at Royal Ascot.