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Dubai’s runaway Princess Haya is the least of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid’s problems
Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is in a league of his own. His approach to governing the emirate – he functioned more as a corporate chief executive with a knack for investing than as an oil monarch presiding over a tribal polity of loyalists turned citizens – made him an exception in…
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The Fairy Tale Is Over for Dubai’s Royal Family
Sheikh Mohammed’s wife has fled her home—and that may just be the beginning of his troubles. Everything about the story of Haya bint al-Hussein has always been remarkable. The half-sister of the current Jordanian king, Princess Haya has long been the most publicly visible and widely known of the six wives of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh…
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The power struggle surrounding the UAE’s latest runaway princess
Legal battle lines have been drawn up for a court case in London at the end of this month in which unprecedented revelations are expected to be made about one of the most powerful monarchies in the Middle East. The case, involving the ruler of Dubai and his sixth wife, comes with some extraordinary chapters…
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Silks join campaign over missing Dubai princess
Two senior barristers have joined a legal campaign seeking the release of a Middle Eastern princess who was allegedly abducted on the orders of her father. The disappearance of Princess Latifa al-Maktoum, the daughter of the ruler of Dubai, has been linked to the decision of her stepmother, Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, to seek sanctuary…
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Inside story: Princess Haya’s divorce and the Gulf royals caught between two worlds
Headlines have a way of coming back to haunt you. Two years ago, in an interview with the society magazine, Tatler, the glamorous Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein, wife of the billionaire Emir of Dubai, was hailed as “changing the way women are perceived in the Middle East”. Alongside a picture of the 45-year-old Jordanian-born princess…
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Gulf states’ ruling families spill their dirty secrets in London
With the unexplained death of the crown prince of Sharjah and the impending divorce of Dubai’s ruling couple, the secretive Arab dynasties are in the spotlight
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Dubai: Princess Haya’s flight to UK threatens diplomatic crisis
Wife of sheikh is said to fear kidnap after disappearances of other female royals Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein’s flight to Britain is threatening to provoke a diplomatic crisis as her husband, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and a key UK ally in the Gulf, faces mounting criticism over his family’s…
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Sheikha Shamsa: Dubai princess a ‘prisoner’ 20 years after failed attempt to flee
Sheikha Shamsa was 19 when she took a car and fled, but just weeks later she was found and sent back to Dubai — never to be seen again.
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Intrigue, secrecy and an angry poetic outburst surround reports of runaway Gulf princess
The plotline reads like an international high-society drama: A glamorous princess, fleeing her marriage to an aging Gulf potentate, is said to seek shelter in the poshest precincts of London.
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Runaway Princess Haya is just the latest in sheikh’s family to flee
It all began when a teenage girl in Surrey ran away from home 19 years ago. She was found a few weeks later and not much more was heard about her. If she had been a normal girl, that would have been that. But the temporary disappearance of Sheikha Shamsa al-Maktoum, now 37, daughter of…