Princess Latifa urges UK police to reopen sister’s kidnapping case
A DUBAI princess who says she is being held captive by her father has pleaded with British detectives to re-investigate the kidnapping of her older sister more than 20 years ago.
Princess Latifa sent a letter through friends to Cambridgeshire Police, urging them to look again at how her sister, Princess Shamsa, was snatched from a Cambridge street and flown back to Dubai by private jet.
In 2000 Shamsa, then 19, escaped from a Surrey estate belonging to her father, Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, but was hunted down and recaptured by armed agents.
Latifa, who says she is being held hostage by her father, has now made a fresh appeal to the UK police force, claiming Shamsa was held prisoner and tortured on her return to Dubai. “All I ask of you is to please give attention on her case because it could get her her freedom,” she wrote. “Your help and attention on her case could free her.”
Latifa, who made her own failed escape attempt on a yacht in 2018, added that her sister “really loves England” and “all of her fondest memories are of her time there”.
In 2019, a High Court judge ruled that Sheikh Mohammed had ordered the abductions of both daughters and held them against their will.
Court hearings before Sir Andrew McFarlane were told Shamsa says she was drugged and subjected to “constant torture” on her return
to Dubai, including solitary confinement and regular beatings.
She wanted to go to university but had been blocked by her father, and in summer 2000 drove to the edge of the £75 million family estate in Longcross before making a break for freedom. She checked into a hotel in Cambridge but she was found and sedated by armed guards working for the Sheikh. By 5am the following morning, she was on a private jet back to Dubai. Cambridgeshire police first probed the circumstances of Shamsa’s departure from England in 2001, but detectives were blocked from flying to Dubai to continue their investigations. The case was reviewed in 2018, and is being looked at again following the High Court decision. The force confirmed to the BBC it had received Latifa’s letter, saying it “will be looked at”.
Sheikh Mohammed has not commented, but said in a statement to the High Court he was relieved when “vulnerable” Shamsa was found.