Shoot me, don’t send me back
. . . the desperate cry of Dubai’s Princess Latifa as commandos sent by her father stormed her getaway yacht. Here, the spy who masterminded her escape tells a story more gripping than any thriller
THE gun barrel jabbed into Hervé Jaubert’s face came with a strict instruction: ‘Shut your eyes and keep them closed!’ It was the moment that the yacht skipper knew his secret 1,300-mile journey to outrun a tyrant’s grasp had ended. A few miles short of his destination, Jaubert heard the explosions of stun grenades as commandos swarmed over his boat. Minutes later, his precious human cargo, cowering in a bathroom below decks, was seized. Yet this was no drugs bust or anti-piracy operation, but a brutal demonstration of the incredible lengths that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and one of the world’s richest men, would go to, to crush his daughter’s dream of escaping her gilded cage.
Princess Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, is one of 30 children born to the Sheikh, a friend of the Queen. Now 34, Latifa staged her daring escape almost two years ago with the help of Mr Jaubert, a former French naval captain and one-time spy, using a hidden compartment in a car, a dinghy and jet-skis.
Today, for the first time, he reveals the elaborate details of the operation, conceived over seven years and planned with military precision – yet ending in failure in the Arabian Sea. The haunting last scream that Jaubert heard from Latifa as she was dragged away was: ‘Shoot me here, don’t send me home!’ The extraordinary revelations come after it emerged that a High Court judge had ruled that Al Maktoum ordered the kidnapping of Latifa in 2018, and of her elder sister, Shamsa – from a Cambridge street – in 2000.
To the outside world, Latifa had everything money could buy, but in truth she was a prisoner after trying to escape in 2002. Mr Jaubert, 62, was at home in Florida in 2011 when he was first emailed by Latifa, who had read the colourful account of his own escape from Dubai a few years earlier after clashing with the Royal Family over a submarine project.
ACCUSED of embezzlement, he fled by disguising himself in a burka over scuba gear and then swimming out to a boat in the dead of night, before sailing to India.
Initially suspicious that Latifa’s email was a ruse to lure him back to Dubai, Mr Jaubert was eventually persuaded that the desperate pleas were genuine. The pair began to communicate via Skype and SIM cards that the UAE government couldn’t monitor.’
He decided to help after hearing of her first failed escape and the treatment meted out to Shamsa after her seizure in Britain.
‘ I couldn’t comprehend how any father could abuse or torture his own children,’ says Mr Jaubert.
He remains haunted by his failure to save Latifa, but is encouraged by the court judgment that he hopes ‘will have ramifications not just in Dubai but throughout the Middle
East’. Once convinced that Latifa was genuine, the pair began to discuss options, and around a year before the break-out, he began training Latifa for the operation through a friend, the princess’s Finnish skydiving pal and martial arts instructor, Tiina Jauhiainen.
Mr Jaubert says: ‘The first idea was to get Latifa out the same way as I had escaped, using scubadiving equipment, but once she and Tiina began training in a pool, we realised that Latifa was having breathing difficulties under the water and we had to scrap it.’
Tiina told the High Court that Mr Jaubert was paid about £300,000 by Latifa. He says that was to cover his expenses, such as supplying an Audi Q7 SUV, specially modified in Oman to include a secret compartment in the boot.
Mr Jaubert moored his US-flagged ketch, The Nostromo, off the coast of Oman and, after monitoring weather reports, he decided the escape would begin on February 24, 2018.
Latifa and Tiina were dropped by the princess’s driver at a cafe. After dumping their phones, they crossed into Oman, knowing alarm bells would ring when she missed her 10pm curfew.
Selfies taken by Latifa after reaching Oman show her joy, but Tiina knew the audacious bid for freedom had only just begun.
From Oman, they faced a fivehour journey by dinghy to The Nostromo, but the weather worsened and halfway into the 27-mile trip Mr Jaubert and a colleague set off on jet-skis from the boat to meet the dinghy. With the women riding pillion, they were thrown about by 6ft waves as they travelled for two hours back to the yacht.
For a week, they sailed towards India. As she relaxed, Latifa texted goodbye messages to her mother and close siblings using the yacht’s secure satellite system. But after five days, as The Nostromo headed towards Goa, Mr Jaubert became aware of the presence nearby of at least three Indian coastguard ships, a UAE navy frigate and two helicopters, but remained calm.
‘ Even if t hey boarded us, I thought I’d be able to explain the situation and let them talk to Latifa and there would be no problem,’ he said. Nonetheless, he and Latifa contacted Radha Stirling, a lawyer and founder of the human rights group Detained In Dubai, and asked her to release a video that Latifa had secretly recorded about her and Shamsa’s plight should anything go wrong – which it did at 11pm on March 4, when the commando units struck.
Deafened by the stun grenades and as the cabin filled with tear gas, Latifa and Tiina huddled together in a bathroom while the princess frantically texted Ms Stirling in Spain. In one message she wrote: ‘ Please help. Please please there are men outside.’
In court, Tiina said: ‘Latifa’s last words I heard as she was dragged away kicking and screaming were, “You can’t get me back alive. Don’t take me back. Shoot me here, don’t take me back.” ’ Mr Jaubert and his crew were beaten while Latifa was taken by helicopter, then by private jet, to Dubai.
Mr Jaubert was convinced he was going to die. ‘I said to one of my captors “Why don’t you just shoot me now?” but he told me I would die slowly under torture once we got back to Dubai.’
Instead, he was released after a week. Latifa was not so lucky, disappearing from public sight. She has been seen just once since the rescue attempt, for a 2018 photo opportunity with the former Irish president Mary Robinson – labelled by campaigners as a PR stunt.