The foreign secretary is ‘deeply troubled’ by a video from Dubai ruler’s daughter reporting that she was being held hostage
Catherine Philp
February 17, 2021, The Times
Dominic Raab has called on the UAE to present proof that the daughter of the ruler of Dubai is alive after the emergence of a “deeply troubling” video in which she says she is being held hostage.
The foreign secretary said the video of Princess Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum “showed a young woman under deep distress” and applauded a call from the United Nations high commissioner for human rights for evidence of what had happened to her.
“Given what we’ve just seen, I think people would just at a human level want to see that she’s alive and well,” Raab told Sky News.
The UN human rights office said it would raised the video with the United Arab Emirates after it was aired by BBC Panorama on Tuesday, months after lawyers presented Princess Latifa’s case to the UN working group on arbitrary detentions, accusing her father Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum of her abduction after she fled Dubai.
The UN panel is considering whether to begin a full investigation.
In secretly recorded videos Latifa claims to have been threatened with being shot unless she co-operated with official statements issued by her father.
Latifa’s videos were recorded in the bathroom of a villa close to a beach in the tourist destination. They were taken on a phone she was given about a year after her failed attempt to escape Dubai in 2018.
In secretly recorded videos Latifa claims to have been threatened with being shot unless she co-operated with official statements issued by her father.
Latifa’s videos were recorded in the bathroom of a villa close to a beach in the tourist destination. They were taken on a phone she was given about a year after her failed attempt to escape Dubai in 2018.
“It’s not as simple as saying well, we could apply sanctions,” Raab told Today on BBC Radio 4. “I’m not trying to belittle or reduce the significance of the situation in relation to Princess Latifa. I think it is serious, but I’m just pointing out that you were for our sanctions mechanism, you have a legal basis and it’s an evidence-based process.”
“I think the right thing to do at the moment is with the United Nations high commissioner on human rights who said that she is going to look into this to support that process, use the right international figure to do that and obviously we’ll monitor what she finds,” he said. “When there’s a human rights issue or a very sensitive case we do not shirk our responsibilities.”
The case came before the British courts a year ago when Latifa’s disappearance was raised in allegation by Mohammed’s former wife, Princess Haya, who was seeking a protective order over their daughter.
A High Court judge accepted that the sheikh was responsible for Latifa’s abduction and that of Shamsa, who said she was snatched from a street in Cambridge in 2000, taken to the Newmarket property and returned to Dubai. The sheikh’s lawyers rejected all the allegations.