The mystery of Princess Latifa: she tried to escape Dubai and her father and we do not know anything about her since then.

The princess known as Sheikha Latifa had not left Dubai, the scintillating emirate ruled by her father, in 18 years. His requests to travel and study elsewhere had been rejected. His pbadport had been removed. The apartments of his friends were forbidden to him, his palace was forbidden to them.

At 32, Sheikha Latifa Bint, Mohammed al-Maktoum was not going anywhere without a zealous escort.

"There is no justice here," he said in a video that he had secretly registered last year. "Especially if you're a woman, your life is very disposable."

It is therefore with surprise that his friends abroad read a WhatsApp message from him last March, announcing that he had left Dubai "forever".

"I have a very uncomfortable feeling," said one of them, an American diver named Chris Colwell. "It's real," he added. "Where are you."

"Free," she replied. "And I will come to see you soon." He added an emiticón of a heart.

His escape, planned for several years with the help of a Finnish capoeira coach and a former self – proclaimed spy, lasted less than a week.

A few days after having sailed in the Indian Ocean on the yacht of the former French agent, bound for India and then the United States, the sheikha is you. It has not been seen since, with the exception of some photos released in December by her family, which indicate that she is safe at home after surviving what they've called kidnapping.

However, thanks to the video he made before escaping, the sheikha's face and voice spread worldwide, recording more than 2 million views on YouTube, boosting coverage. avid media and harming the image of Dubai. as the world capital of ostentation and commerce as graffiti.

Like young women who have fled the Saudi restrictive regime, Sheikha Latifa ensured that no one could forget about the lack of freedoms granted to women in the more conservative societies of the Middle East, nor their cost. challenge the Dubai rule.

Despite all its mega shopping centers, haute cuisine and dizzying skyscrapers, Dubai has suddenly moved from an international playground to a repressive police state. He drew attention in the West to the arrests of foreigners who were held in public for drinking alcohol without a license.

Last year he had been widely condemned for detaining a British academic, Matthew Hedges, after accusing him of being a British spy. In recent years, the authorities have also intensified the crackdown on internal dissent.

"It does not matter whether you are a common Emirati citizen or a member of the Royal Family or an immigrant of a close ally like the UK," said Hiba Zayadin, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. "If you damage this carefully designed image," he added, "you will face the consequences."

Throughout the first 39 minutes of the video, with a composed and powerful voice, Sheikha Latifa described in fluent English her life of restricted privileges and atrophied hopes. She hoped that he would change if he could get political asylum in the United States.

"I do not know how, I'm going to feel, just getting up in the morning and saying," I can do anything I want today, "he said." It will be a feeling so new, so different, that it will be amazing. "

Fearing for her life if she got caught, she stated that she was recording the video in case she failed.

"They will not take me back alive," he said. "It will not happen, if I do not go out alive, at least there is a video."

Sheikha Latifa had to face strict restrictions for the first time after her sister's failure in a robbery attempt years ago.

At the age of 14, her older sister, Shamsa, escaped from her family's security guards while on a trip to England. His father, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubai leader and UAE Prime Minister, owns a vast estate and a remarkable breed stallion, the Godolphin.

The news at that time indicated that the UAE custody had finally found Shamsa in a Cambridge street, forcing her into a car. When an inspector from Scotland Yard began investigating his case as a kidnapping, the Dubai authorities refused to allow him to interview him. The case is over there.

Sheikha Latifa said that Shamsa, the only one of the 30 brothers and sisters with whom she had affinity, had been drugged to make her more docile, "essentially as if she was walking with a cage in her wake."

Horrified by Shamsa's treatment, she said she tried to escape across the border on her way to Oman. Recovered almost immediately, she claimed to have been held in solitary confinement for more than three years.

The UAE family laws allow women to be punished for disobeying and Latifa explained that she was often out of bed to get beaten, that she was deprived of medical care and even, until she did not get married. in recent months, a toothbrush.

Even after being released at age 19, her life was defined by both her family limits and her wealth.

She lived in a palace behind high walls, with 40 rooms spread over four wings, one for each family member who lived there, said Tiina Jauhiainen, a Finn who started training Sheikha Latifa in the martial art Afro-Brazilian Capoeira in 2010. There were about 100 domestics and a sports complex with its own pool and spa. Wherever the sheikha went, a Filipina housekeeper was also with her.

But it was a forced, confined leisure life. He could only spend his money for hobbies and sports, such as riding and diving, or inviting friends to lunch or manicure. She was not allowed to study medicine as she wanted, her friends said.

I could not travel either, not even to the emirate of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven city-states that make up the United Arab Emirates. She lobbied her friends for them to describe each trip for her "as they traveled with me," said Stefania Martinengo, her friend and skydiving coach.

He was also forbidden to go to non-public places, including friends. Pbadionate paratrooper, he once landed secretly in an unauthorized part of town to go kayaking for 20 minutes with Colwell.

When her friends traveled in the black Mercedes that was carrying her often, she put on headphones and sat quietly, refusing to say a word in front of the driver.

Skydiving was his main distraction.

Falling to heaven, "you are equal to everyone," Martinengo said. "You do not speak, you just fly, I think he loved being free in paradise."

At first glance, she did not look fabulously rich or extremely unhappy.

Presenting themselves under the name of Latifa, they often took her as another local woman. Under the abaya that covered everything he wore in public, he usually wore t-shirts and pants. She escaped most of the photos. She listened before speaking. She never complained about her situation, her friends said.

She has never talked about her family. The rich people of Dubai flaunt their lives on Instagram. she was just googleable.

But she dreamed of taking the reins of her own life. She spoke about creating a team of Emirati paratroopers, in the hope that her father would let her go to international competitions. Vegetable and pbadionate about well-being and healthy living, she planned to invest in a yoga and juice center in Europe with Martinengo.

When Martinengo asked him how he could help run the business without traveling, he said, "I have a feeling that things might change."

Almost no one realized that later, he had planned to escape for several years.

He first contacted Hervé Jaubert, whose website describes him as a former French intelligence officer and "an extraordinary man" who managed to escape from Dubai in a small town. inflatable dinghy by dressing in woman.

Then Latifa enlisted in Jauhiainen. At one point, they trained to dive and swim up to Oman with the help of an underwater scooter.

Jauhiainen said that Sheik Latifa wanted to help other women who had been trapped in similar situations and wanted to release Shamsa. If necessary, I thought I could work as a skydiving instructor.

"I'm ready to return hamburgers or do anything while I regain my freedom," she told Ms. Jauhiainen.

A few days before he left, he escaped from a shopping mall to record the video in Jauhiainen's apartment.

"I am convinced of the future," he said. "I feel it's the beginning of an adventure, it's the beginning of my life's claim, my freedom, my freedom of choice."

"I'm really worried about this," he added.

On the morning of the escape, Sheikh Latifa was taken to lunch with Jauhiainen in a restaurant, as she did before. According to Jauhiainen, they got into their car and headed for Oman, where they went on an inflatable raft, then on a jet ski, to Jaubert's yacht. A selfie caught in the car shows the Latifa sheikha who smiles behind euphoric sunglbades.

"We're like Thelma and Louise," joked Jauhiainen, referring to the 1991 American film.

"Do not say that," protested Sheikha Latifa. "It's a sad end!"

While traveling to India in the afternoon of March 4, women were preparing to lie under the covers when they heard loud noises. They locked themselves in the bathroom, but this one is filled with smoke. The only way out was in place.

On the bridge, gunmen that Jauhiainen identified as Indians and Emirati pushed Jaubert, Jauhiainen and the Philippine ground crew, tying and hitting them. They told Jauhiainen to take his last breath. Jauhiainen saw Sheikha Latifa on the floor, bound but strikingly, shouting that she wanted political asylum in India.

In a short time, an Arab speaking man boarded the boat. He said, said Jauhiainen, that he had come to get the sheikh.

"Shoot me here," he shouted, remembered Jauhiainen. "Do not bring me back."

His father, Sheikh Mohammed, only returned home in December, when the BBC was about to broadcast a documentary. Her office issued a statement that Latifa was safe in Dubai, celebrating her 33rd birthday with the family "in intimacy and peace" (Jauhiainen said the Sheikha had not chosen to spend her birthday with the family for years).

The statement accused Jaubert, whom he described as a "convicted criminal," of kidnapping Latifa for a $ 100 million ransom.

Sheikh Mohammed did not respond to an interview request sent to his office. The Emirates Embbady in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Things have gotten worse since then.

On Christmas Eve, Dubai released the first public photos of Sheikha Latifa since her pbading. They showed it to Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who confirmed that she had met the Sheikha at the request from his family.

Robinson stated that Sheikha Latifa was safe with her family, but that she was receiving psychiatric care and called her "young woman with problems" with a "serious health problem".

"It's a family problem now," Robinson said.

The defenders of the sheikha were surprised that a respected human rights defender had apparently adopted Dubai's official line. They wondered if Latifa was suffering from a psychiatric problem, apart from an illness likely to develop due to her imprisonment or the fact that she had been sedated.

"I am 100% sure that I do not need mental attention," Martinengo said. "Maybe now, after all these treatments, but not before, how can you think that a person imprisoned for nine months does not seem worried?"

The friends also found in the pictures the appearance of the Sheikha Latifa – a little stunned, eyes lost without noticing the camera – disturbing.

With negative attention to her, Robinson issued a statement that she had done her badessment "in good faith and to the best of my ability," adding that "Sheikha's vulnerability was obvious".

In mid-January, a lawyer who worked with activists abandoned the case of Sheikha Latifa without any explanation. Several friends still in Dubai said that they were too scared to talk, while Jaubert suddenly stopped responding to requests for interviews for this article.

Sheikha Latifa had little doubt about what was going to happen to her.

"If you watch this video, it's not so good," he said in his video. "Or I'm dead, or I'm in a very, very, very bad situation."

Copyright: 2019 New York Times News Service