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Dubai’s Princess Haya wins record £554m divorce settlement
The ruler of Dubai has been ordered to pay his youngest wife and their two children a record £554 million settlement after a bitter divorce. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, 72, was found to pose a serious security risk to his former wife Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein, 47, the sister of King Abdullah II of…
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The Real Housewives comes to Dubai
The blingy TV franchise is coming to the emirate with a reputation for extreme luxury. It might be an awkward marriage. “Life is different in a gated community.” In the 15 years since The Real Housewives of Orange County first buttonholed its loyal, tinsel-hungry audience with this magnificently F Scott Fitzgeraldian opening line, the Real Housewives reality TV franchise…
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Dubai ruler’s ‘campaign of fear and intimidation’ against Princess Haya
Findings of UK high court judge have repercussions beyond the Gulf state. So bad were relations between Princess Haya and her estranged husband Dubai’s billionaire ruler that she felt “hunted all the time” and that there was “nowhere for me to go to be safe”, even in the UK, where she had built a new…
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Sheikh Mohammed: Reopen ‘hacking’ case, Met urged
Scotland Yard faces growing pressure to reopen an investigation into alleged phone hacking by the ruler of Dubai. Detectives closed the inquiry eight months before a High Court ruling was made public on Wednesday. It found that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum had orchestrated a sophisticated spyware attack. The Crown Prosecution Service said yesterday that it…
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Cherie Blair is adviser to NSO, the firm behind Pegasus spyware
Cherie Blair faces scrutiny about her work for a secretive company behind a spyware system despite exposing its use in the hacking of a Conservative peer. The wife of Tony Blair, the former Labour leader, is an ethics adviser to NSO, the Israeli intelligence company behind Pegasus spyware. She called Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia in…
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The Times view on Sheikh Mohammed and our ties with the UAE: Questionable Allies
Dubai’s ruler faces a criminal investigation over the hacking of a Tory peer’s phone. British judge’s conclusion that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum used sophisticated spyware to hack the phone of his estranged wife’s lawyer will only deepen the acrimony in what was already a bitter custody battle. But the news that Dubai’s ruler now…
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Sheikh Mohammed hacked Baroness Shackleton’s mobile phone, rules judge
The government was urged last night to review its diplomatic relationship with one of its closest Middle East allies after a judge implicated its ruler in the hacking of a Tory peer’s mobile phone. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum of Dubai, a member of the Queen’s racing circle, faces a renewed police investigation into the…
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Sheikh Set Israeli Spyware on Ex-Wife in Custody Battle, Court Says
The ruler of Dubai was found to have hacked the phones of his former wife, a Jordanian princess, and of her lawyers. One of those targeted is a member of the House of Lords in Britain. When the hyper-wealthy ruler of the Middle Eastern emirate of Dubai found himself embroiled in a British court case…
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‘Latifa isn’t free — she’s just in a bigger prison than before’
The ex-wife of Dubai’s leader has reason to doubt the tale of his prodigal daughter — she too was held captive by him, she claims. Reclining by a window in her hilltop residence outside Beirut, Randa al-Banna took a puff of her slim cigarette and looked out over the Mediterranean. The former wife of Sheikh…
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The Runaway Princesses of Dubai
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai rules one of the world’s richest city-states–and prides himself on being progressive. So why do women from his family keep fleeing? The Royal Courts of Justice, a massive Victorian Gothic structure on the Strand in the heart of London built in the 1870s, is not typically the…