How FBI ‘helped sheikh to kidnap princess’
Agents ‘duped into tracking her down’
FBI agents were duped into helping Dubai’s ruler mastermind the alleged kidnap of his runaway daughter, it is claimed.
Dubai authorities told the US service that Princess latifa had been taken hostage and they needed help to find her, according to an investigation into her disappearance.
FBI agents used internet and phone records to pinpoint the missing woman on a yacht in the Indian Ocean, and passed the information to the Dubai, the USA Today newspaper reported.
Supporters of the missing princess claim she was then kidnapped from the yacht Nostromo by commandos acting for her father, Dubai’s leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. The desperate princess, who had planned to escape from Dubai on the yacht, was said to have screamed: ‘Shoot me here! Don’t take me back!’
The yacht was reportedly pinpointed after Dubai authorities contacted an FBI agent based in Dubai, and claimed latifa had been taken against her will. The unnamed agent and their superior officer, stationed at the US embassy in Abu Dhabi, were asked if US internet service providers could check when latifa last accessed her email. The agents believed they were responding to an emergency involving a foreign ally and duly obtained geolocation data from the yacht’s internet provider, according to USA Today.
An unnamed source said: ‘The FBI truly believed this was a kidnapping case and the US was saving the day.’ The FBI has refused to comment.
Sheikh Mohammed has denied he ordered the 2018 kidnap of his daughter, and the earlier alleged abduction of another daughter, Shamsa, who was snatched from a street in Cambridge in 2000.
His aides have previously insisted that latifa, 35, is safe in the care of her family. But earlier this year a video emerged in which she claimed she was captive in Dubai in a ‘villa-jail’, and feared for her life.
Since then, photographs have been posted online which appeared to show her at a mall in Dubai and then with a friend at an airport in Spain.
The images appeared on a public Instagram account for latifa’s friend Sioned Taylor. She posted the Spanish picture with the caption: ‘Great European holiday with latifa.’ london law firm Taylor Wessing then issued a statement attributed to the princess, saying the photos were released to prove she was free to travel.
Sheikh Mohammed’s sixth wife Princess Haya fled to Britain last year with her two children and said she feared for her safety.