Queen now set to shun Sheikh over kidnapping
THE QUEEN will shun the billionaire ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, after a British court ruling that he kidnapped two of his daughters.
Her Majesty and the Sheikh have enjoyed a close relationship for decades through their shared love of horseracing and he has been a guest in the Royal Box at Ascot.
But, according to The Times, the Queen is now expected to avoid being photographed with him in public. The move comes after a judge ruled that the Sheikh had kidnapped his daughters Shamsa and Latifa and had them returned to Dubai.
Sheikh Mohammed, 70, was also said to have left Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, his sixth wife, in fear of her life after discovering her affair with a bodyguard.
She fled last year to her £75 million home in West London with their two children – Jalila, 12, and Zayed, seven. The couple have since divorced.
If the Queen does distance herself from Sheikh Mohammed, it could have an impact on Britain’s relationship with the United Arab Emirates, a key ally. The UAE is a huge market for British arms manufacturers, with sales of £7.3 billion between 2008 and 2017.
The Queen has received annual gifts of horses from Sheikh Mohammed – the Royal Stables use the stud services of his Godolphin racing empire. Her Majesty is said to want to avoid being dragged into the dispute.
The publication of the court ruling by Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the Family Division of the High Court, has also prompted Cambridgeshire Police to review for a second time its stalled inquiry into the kidnap of Princess Shamsa.
The Sheikh was accused in court of ordering his agents to abduct her in Cambridge after she escaped in 2000 from the family’s country estate.
Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary at the time of Shamsa’s capture, asked to be kept informed of the case, and after the officer leading the police investigation was denied permission by the Crown Prosecution Service to travel to Dubai to interview witnesses, the inquiry was dropped. The officer, former Detective Chief Inspector David Beck, believes the truth was suppressed to save official ‘embarrassment’.
He said: ‘In court they quoted “significant sensitivities” [which] to me means someone is going to get embarrassed. Well, personal embarrassment is not a reason for withholding the truth about the evidence.’
The judge ruled the Sheikh was behind the kidnapping of Princess Latifa, 34, who was snatched at gunpoint from a yacht in the Indian Ocean in 2018.
Lawyer Radha Stirling, founder of the human rights group Detained In Dubai, who represented Latifa, last night raised fears that British travellers or expats in Dubai could face reprisals following the ruling.
And Tory MP Bob Seely, a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, called for the police probe into Shamsa’s kidnapping to be relaunched.
‘Whether we have good relations or bad relations with a country, we have to uphold the rule of law,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
The British Horseracing Authority has been urged to reassess its permission for Sheikh Mohammed to operate as an owner in the UK after the ruling found he had ‘not been open and honest with the court’.
Sheikh Mohammed said of the court hearing: ‘As a head of government, I was not able to participate in the court’s fact-finding process. This has resulted in the release of a fact-finding judgment which inevitably only tells one side of the story.’
Buckingham Palace declined to comment.