Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
JUDGE FINDS
BILLIONAIRE racehorse owner Sheikh Mohammed al-maktoum used torture to control a member of his family and subjected his estranged wife to intimidation and fear, a civil court has ruled.
The 70-year-old Sheikh, who is ruler of Dubai and a friend of the Queen, left Princess Haya Al Hussein fearing her children would be kidnapped as a result of his controlling behaviour.
Princess Haya, 45, fled to London with their two children, aged 12 and eight, and sought the protection of the British legal system in a lengthy court battle.
Shocking details emerged from the High Court case, including allegations involving loaded guns being left on pillows and forced injections.
The Sheikh, 70, whose Godolphin stables have produced winners of Royal Ascot and the Derby, repeatedly tried to conceal his actions from the public, hiring a team of expert lawyers to seek a ban on the case being fully reported.
But the Court of Appeal yesterday ruled details of the hearings, which have been held in London since last year, can be reported for the first time.
Sir Andrew Mcfarlane, president of the Family Division, had earlier ruled it was “overwhelmingly” important the methods used by the ruler should be made public. They included allegations involving the Sheikh’s behaviour towards a number of his children.
Sir Andrew found it a “matter of fact” that the Sheikh had abducted his daughters from another marriage, Sheika Shamsa and Sheika Latifa, and detained them in Dubai. Shamsa fled the family’s UK estate in Surrey in
2000 but was recaptured in Cambridgeshire by agents of the Sheikh and forcibly returned to Dubai where she remains in captivity.
Latifa made two unsuccessful attempts to flee her father’s family, in 2002 and 2018. After the first she was imprisoned by her father in Dubai for over three years.
In the second she was recaptured at sea off the Indian coast and forcibly returned to Dubai, where she remains under house arrest.
The judge found claims of serious physical abuse amounting to invest much of his cash in his real passion – horse racing.
He is a regular visitor to Royal Ascot, where he is often seen with the Queen and other members of the Royal Family.
He founded the Maktoum family-owned Godolphin racing stable and is the owner of Darley, a thoroughbred breeding operation based on the outskirts of Newmarket, Suffolk, with hubs in five other countries.
One of his most famous horses, Lammtarra, won the Derby in 1995. torture, made by Latifa in a public video, to be credible. He quoted what she said of her treatment: “I was in prison for three years and four months.
“Even when they weren’t physically beating me up, they were torturing me. I was in solitary confinement, there’s no windows, so when they