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More than 20 years ago, Princess Shamsa, the daughter of UAE Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, tried to escape Dubai while on holiday with members of her family in England.

The sheikh launched a search for her but didn’t inform the police – his men tracked her down in Cambridge over a month later.

In an email to her lawyer, she described being bundled into a car and driven to her father’s house in Newmarket, where she was injected and given tablets. The next morning she was flown back to Dubai on a private plane.

Her sister, Princess Latifa, also attempted multiple escapes, the first in 2002 when she was 16, following which she says she was jailed, tortured, and kept in solitary confinement for three years and four months.

She attempted to escape again in 2018, with the plan leave Dubai and seek political asylum in America.

The attempt failed, and the Royal Family released a statement saying that Latifa and her sister Shamsa are “adored and cherished”, and that Latifa was “safe in Dubai”, celebrating her birthday “in privacy and in peace”.

Fast forward to 2021, and the BBC is airing a documentary titled The Missing Princess. Ahead of the release, they supplied CNN with a video clip showing Latifa talking about her imprisonment in a villa “converted into a jail”, secretly recorded on a phone smuggled to her by a friend, Tiina Jauhiainen:

When Tiina last saw Latifa in 2018, they were on a yacht travelling across the Indian Ocean, as part of a risky plan to get the princess out of Dubai.

Per BBC, in a video that she shared just before her attempted escape, she said, “I’m not allowed to drive, I’m not allowed to travel or leave Dubai at all”.

“I haven’t left the country since 2000. I’ve been asking a lot to just go travelling, to study, to do anything normal. They don’t let me. I need to leave.”

“I’m feeling positive about the future. I don’t know how I’ll feel just waking up in the morning and thinking I can do whatever I want today. I’m really looking forward to that.”

Back to CNN, who says that BBC has managed to verify the details of where Latifa is allegedly being held. They say that the villa is guarded by around 30 police, but cannot verify that she is inside.

After her failed escape in 2018, Latifa was visited by the former UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, who at the time said that she felt that Latifa was fine, but changed her mind when interviewed in the documentary.

“I was misled, initially by my good friend princess Haya, because she was misled. Haya began to explain that Latifa had quite a serious bipolar problem. And they were saying to me, in a way that was very convincing: ‘we don’t want Latifa to go through any further trauma’ … I didn’t know how to address somebody who was bipolar about their trauma. And I didn’t really actually want to talk to her and increase the trauma over a nice lunch,” Robinson says in a clip from the program.

Princess Haya bint al-Hussein is the former wife of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. She successfully escaped Dubai in 2019 with their two children, reportedly in fear of her life.

The BBC transcribed some of what Latifa said happened after she was captured while on the yacht.

“I was fighting, and this guy came with a small pouch and he took out the needle and he injected me in my arm.”

She says she was then transferred to an Indian military ship.

“The commandos carried me through this corridor, and to a big room, and there was in front of me like maybe four or five generals.”

She then describes being manhandled by an Emirati commando.

“He grabs me. Lifts me up. Kicking and fighting, he’s much bigger than me. So I see that his sleeve is rolled up and arm exposed. I had one shot. Bit as hard as I can, and shake my head. And he screamed.”

Latifa was tranquilised and flown back to Dubai.

After smuggling out a few videos and covert messages to Tiina, her UK-based maternal cousin Marcus, and Free Latifa co-founder David Haigh, the communication suddenly stopped.

She is now in her third year of solitary confinement and imprisonment.

Tiina, David and Marcus have released the video in an attempt to put pressure on the sheikh to release her.

The documentary is currently streaming on BBC One.

More from Sky News about the princess:

[source:cnn&bbc]