According to a news report published in The Guardian, Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, the former wife of United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s prime minister, fled the country last April, after become ‘terrified’ of her ex-husband.
Judge Andrew McFarlane, who heads the Family Division of the High Court of England and Wales, found Sheikh Mohammed had ‘orchestrated’ the abduction of his daughter Sheikha Shamsa from the UK city of Cambridge when she was 19 in August 2000. The judge said “she was forcibly returned to Dubai and had been deprived of her liberty for much, if not all, of the past two decades.”
The ruling further revealed that Sheikh’s younger daughter Latifa, 35, was seized and returned to Dubai twice, in 2002 and again in 2018.
The court was also told the sheikh divorced Princess Haya without her knowledge on Feb 7, 2019 — the 20th death anniversary of her father King Hussein of Jordan.
Dubai’s ruler tried to prevent two of the court rulings being made public, but the Supreme Court rejected his application on Thursday morning, allowing them to be published.
Sheikh Mohammed in a statement after the publication of the rulings, strongly denied the claims and said the case involved ‘highly personal and private matters’ relating to his children.