Princess Latifa was placed under house arrest in 2018 after a failed escape attempt.
The Emir of Dubai and the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates Mohammed Ibn Rashid Al Maktoum are at the center of a new scandal after a video appeared in which his 35-year-old daughter Latifa calls herself a “hostage” of her own father. The video was broadcast by the princess’s friends to the BBC.
Latifa said that in 2018, her father took her into custody after another escape.
The woman said she was being held in a villa guarded by 30 police officers. According to the princess, she has no access to medical care.
“I shoot this video from the bathroom because this is the only room in the house that I can lock. I am a hostage, and this villa was turned into a prison. All the windows are closed with bars, I cannot open any of them,” Latifa says.
It is noted that about a year after the escape, the princess was secretly given a phone, with which she sent messages to friends for several months. When the connection was cut off, they decided to divulge the information received, fearing for her life.
The sheik’s daughter made her first attempt to escape back in 2002, as a teenager. The second happened in February 2018. The girl, with the help of her friend Tina Jauhiainen and former naval officer Herve Jaubert, tried to hide in India. Together they managed to get to Oman by car and transfer to a yacht, but a few kilometers before the target, their vessel was intercepted by the UAE security forces.
In December 2018, Latifa was visited by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson. She came to the conclusion that the princess was not in danger, but then explained that the girl’s relatives had convinced her that she was suffering from bipolar disorder.
Since then, nothing has been known about Latifa’s fate.
Recall that in 2019, one of the six wives of the ruler of Dubai fled, the 45-year-old Jordanian princess Haya bint Hussein. She also managed to take with her two children from the sheik.
They first took refuge in Germany, and then asked for asylum in the UK.
