How courts backed Mail in fight to tell ex-wife’s story
EVEN as the sheikh tried to hush up the kidnap case, his ex-wife was determined to expose the sham of Dubai’s claim to be an oasis of tolerance.
Princess haya – along with the court-appointed guardian representing their children Princess Jalila, 12, and Prince Zayed, eight – backed the Daily Mail’s application to allow the public to know the full story.
in an unprecedented victory for open justice, the president of the normally-private family division of the high Court agreed to publish his damning findings.
Daily Mail media lawyer Sarah Palin, also representing The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the BBC, The Press Association, Reuters, the FT, Sky News, and The Guardian, argued that the public had a right to know as the case raised important issues as to whether the ‘tolerant oasis the UAE promotes itself as is a sham’.
She said: ‘There have been findings of behaviour, albeit on a civil standard of proof, which are considered criminal offences, and which took place here in england. holding governments to account is an important function of the media.
‘ Reporting of the case might serve to coerce the UAE into allowing the United Nations to investigate the cases of Princess Shamsa and Latifa.’
Miss Palin said the ruler of Dubai enjoyed ‘prominence and status’ in Britain, where he owns property and mixes in high society as a friend of the Queen.
The sheikh ‘ enjoys life in our domain, benefiting from our rule of law, holding assets here, but disregarding our human rights laws,’ she said. ‘The public should not be misled about his behaviour.’
Charles Geekie QC, for Princess haya, said she wanted the public to know the truth.
he added it ‘is positively in the interests of the children that this material be published’ because ‘young people Google each other, and it is our concern that Google should lead to the right material and not the wrong material’.
Deirdre Fottrell QC, for the guardian representing the children, confirmed that it was in the young royals’ interest for the judgment about their father to be published.
Desmond Browne QC, for the sheikh, opposed publication saying the resulting media storm’ would ‘fatally undermine or sabotage’ his chances of reestablishing contact with Jalila and Zayed. it would, he claimed, also ‘divert’ Sheikh Mohammed from trying to bring peace to the Middle east.
After losing at the high Court, the sheikh asked the Appeal Court and then the Supreme
Court to silence the case, but both turned him down.
Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division of the high Court, ruled that publicising the case was ‘urgent and
‘I’ve not been able to defend myself’
pressing’. he said the sheikh had waged a ‘media war’ against his wife since she left him, causing more than 1,000 articles to be published about her worldwide.
The public were under a false impression about Princess haya and it needed to be corrected, he added. ‘The mother describes her life with the children over the past nine months as being one of “solitary confinement” in which she and the children have been shunned and deserted by many, if not all, those who had, in happier times, been friends and, for the children, play companions,’ Sir Andrew said.
Princess haya had told him: ‘ People think that i have wronged the children and wronged Sheikh Mohammed.
‘The public narrative is of me leaving Dubai with the children, taking Sheikh Mohammed’s money following an affair.
‘People do not want to be associated with us.
‘i have not been able to protect fully the children or defend myself against the lurid reporting and character assassination.
‘People have said that they want to help and begin to ask for information about the trial.
‘When i have said the proceedings are closed and i am not able to discuss the matter, i have faced increasing hostility including from members of my own family who have accused me of not trusting them or wondering what i am hiding.
‘There is nothing i can say, and no way to explain our situation to them. My silence, and that of the children, only serves to distance them from us.
‘There is an entire year of our lives we cannot speak of.’