London - Dubai's billionaire ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid
Al Maktoum abducted two of his daughters and warned his estranged
wife, Princess Haya, that she would never be safe in Britain,
according to court documents published on Thursday.
Britain's Supreme Court allowed publication of the documents after
rejecting a final appeal by lawyers acting on behalf of Al Maktoum,
who is also UAE prime minister.
The documents were compiled after a hearing last year when Haya asked
the High Court's family division for custody of her two children, a
forced marriage protection order, and a non-molestation order.
In a "fact-finding judgment" published on Thursday following the
ruling, High Court judge Andrew McFarlane accepted Haya's account
that her estranged husband had arranged for his two daughters from
other marriages, princesses Shamsa and Latifa, to be abducted.
McFarlane wrote that Haya told the court that Al Maktoum had
"threatened her saying 'You and the children will never be safe in
England.'"
Haya also alleged that Latifa was forcibly returned to the emirate
after she was seized from a boat off the coast of India following a
dramatic escape from Dubai in 2018.
McFarlane said he found "on the balance of probability, that Latifa
has been detained in the circumstances described by Princess Haya
since her return to Dubai."
He also believed Haya's account of the abduction of Shamsa, an older
sister of Latifa, in 2000 from a street in the English city of
Cambridge after she had attempted to escape her father's control.