Dubai princess imprisoned by father in villa jail urges UN for rescue in smuggled message

Princess Latifa Al Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai's ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, has sent out an appeal for rescue from the villa jail where she is allegedly imprisoned.

In a series of video messages she recorded in her washroom, the only room in the villa she is allowed to lock, the princess shared details of her ordeal and her failed attempts to escape the jail. The recordings have been obtained by BBC Panorama, which aired them in a programme titled "The Missing Princess" on Tuesday.

According to the princess, the villa where she is imprisoned without access to medical or legal help is located on the beach, with barred doors and windows that are continuously surrounded by police guards. The 35-year-old planned a dramatic escape involving jet skis and a yacht in 2018, but was seized by gun-toting commandos after eight days at sea. She fought with two Emirati officers in a desperate attempt to flee but was drugged and returned to Dubai.

She made another difficult attempt to escape the country with the help of her friends. She was smuggled from one of her father's palaces, driven across the border into Oman from where she took a dinghy off the coast of the capital Muscat into the Arabian Sea. French spy Herve Jaubert, who had once escaped the UAE disguised in a burqa, was waiting for her with jet skis following which they sped across the waves 15 miles to his yacht Nostromo. However, the yacht was being tracked and was ambushed when they reached near the Indian coast.

She also described one of the horrific treatments she was subjected to on a commandos' boat. "The one who was sitting on my stomach, he grabs my chest and he says to me: 'Shut up, shut up', so I got really, really angry and I was hitting him with my hands and screaming at him to get off me and I was so, so angry and I just kept fighting with him really hard. Nobody cared, but eventually because I was really, really, really struggling a lot, the other Emirati guy told him: 'Get off her' and he sat on me and he helped the other guy tie up my legs but I was fighting," she said.

The princess was then tranquilised by the Emirati guy, and woke up to find herself back in Dubai with her hands tied to a stretcher. She was held in the Al Awir jail for three months before being transferred to the villa on the beach.

The Princess was last seen in public in December 2018, when she appeared in a stage-managed photo call with Mary Robinson, former Irish president and UN high commissioner for human rights. While Robinson dubbed Latifa a "troubled young woman" at the time saying she was in the "loving care of her family," she later said she was "horribly tricked" in the meeting that was arranged by the princess's step-mother, Princess Haya.

Princess Haya, the sixth wife of the Dubai ruler, herself fled to Britain last year with their children, Jalila and Zayed, terrified for her safety. The High Court in London ruled last year that the Dubai prime minister "ordered and orchestrated" the abduction of Latifa and also of a second daughter, Princess Shamsa, who was snatched outside a pub in Cambridgeshire. The court also found him guilty of waging a campaign of fear against Princess Haya, who is the daughter of King Hussein of Jordan and his third wife Queen Alia.

Latifa's videos were given to BBC by her close friend Tiina Jauhiainen, maternal cousin Marcus Essabri and campaigner David Haigh, who are all behind the Free Latifa campaign and managed to establish contact with her. Panorama has independently verified the details of where Latifa was held. The United Nations is now being called to step in and investigate the abduction.

Latifa's allegations have once again shed some light on the violation of human rights by Sheikh Mohammed, who is credited for transforming Dubai into a highly successful city. He has been married six times; first to his 17-year-old cousin who bore 12 of his 30 children.