location, given
that Sheik Mohammed is a major property
owner there who could make his influence
felt. The Guardian reaported that private
Dubai channels requested that the U.K.
return Haya to the UAE, though a spokes-
person for the UAE embassy denied this.
Given Haya’s sudden departure, it’s
possible she indeed found out something
about Latifa that she couldn’t “put up with
or stand for.” And some, like the friend of
Haya, do not believe she would have even
invited Robinson to Dubai to meet Latifa
unless she were forced to do so. “The whole
thing with Mary Robinson was completely
bizarre and out of character for Haya,” she
says. “It just struck me as a very bad PR
move that someone else—not Haya—came
up with, and backfired.”
And yet, Haya reportedly left Dubai with
so much money—almost $40 million—that
others wonder if Haya and Sheik Moham-
med hadn’t actually worked out their
separation before she departed. In Dubai,
there was some friction over the marriage:
Haya wanted to open institutes and travel
the world, and two sources say that Sheik
Mohammed’s sons were not enthusiastic
about these pursuits. As the sheik grows old-
er, those sons gain in influence. Haya could
just be an opportunist looking to leave her
husband who saw an opening to gain moral
high ground—by making everyone think she
fled in solidarity with Latifa.
But if Haya surreptitiously worked out
her separation from Sheik Mohammed,
what is one to make of his next move: suing
her in London for custody of their two chil-
dren? Over the summer, he demanded they
be returned to him in Dubai. “The question
for me, and everyone else, is why did he
make this application?” says David Haigh,
a British lawyer who was once imprisoned
for accusations of fraud in Dubai and is now
working on a campaign to free Latifa. “It
just seems odd that he’s putting himself up
to international scrutiny. I mean, he must
be so arrogant.”
Sheik Mohammed might have wanted to
make it clear to the world he will not allow
his wives to leave the country with his off-
spring without consequences. The Arab
dissident characterizes his personality this
way: “Mohammed has two sides to him: He
wants to say, ‘I’m a hip, cool, progressive
guy’ and also ‘I’m the state leader and tribal
chief.’ But trying to be both a modern guy
and a traditional guy at the same time just
doesn’t work.”
Though Dubai still has a reputation in
the U.S. as an important Gulf ally, its power
has waned in recent years. Dubai does not
have much oil. It is dependent on a tour-
ist economy. In fact, neighboring emirate
Abu Dhabi almost completely dominates
the country today—and its leader, Moham-
med bin Zayed al-Nahyan, is essentially the
leader of the UAE.
Controlling sovereign wealth funds of
$1.3 trillion, bin Zayed’s ideology is at odds
with the frank capitalism of Sheik Moham-
med. Bin Zayed’s agenda includes aggres-
sion against Iran, the blockade against
Qatar, and stirring up the crisis in Yemen.
An important voice in D.C., which his coun-
try frequently lobbies, he has been success-
ful in securing President Trump’s endorse-
ment of many of his positions. After Haya
left Dubai, her half brother King Abdullah
II needed to shore up support in the UAE—
but he didn’t travel to Dubai to kiss Sheik
Mohammed’s ring. Instead, he flew to Abu
Dhabi, writing on Twitter, “I pray to God
for a lasting friendship and love between
our two brotherly countries and peoples,
as it has been between our two families
over the years.”
With tension between Abu Dhabi and
Dubai, one might think that bin Zayed
helped Haya advance her plan to leave
the country. But a Dubai expert says this
is unlikely: “Abu Dhabi and Dubai have a
rocky relationship right now as Abu Dhabi
tries to usurp Dubai’s key sectors by building
up their own tourism, airlines, media, alumi-
num—basically anything but diamonds—
and compete with Dubai directly,” he says.
“But poking a hard stick into Sheik Moham-
med’s love life sounds a little implausible.”
And as usual, there is little informa-
tion to be had. “This is a major scandal
in both Jordan and the UAE, to the point
where people are not even speaking about
it,” says the Arab dissident. “If you speak
about it publicly, you are in trouble—in
both countries.”TODAY, HAYA IS living in a Kensington Pal-
ace Gardens mansion purchased from Indi-
an steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and worth
about 85 million pounds. Jordan has made
Haya an envoy at its embassy, which allows
her to claim diplomatic immunity and pro-
tection under the Geneva Convention, and
remain in the U.K. Little more is known
about what she suffered, even though a
series of posts on a fake news website have
included crass talk about her sex life—and
even the rumor that Latifa has been killedand buried on the grounds of Sheik Moham-
med’s Zabeel Palace. Jauhiainen does not
think this is true. “For sure, she is impris-
oned in a secret location,” she says.
Mary Robinson has refused to comment
further on the matter of Latifa’s mental
state and escape but made her allegiance
to Haya, not Sheik Mohammed, clear in
Dublin over the summer: “I really have
nothing more to say about that,” she told
an interviewer. “I have never been friends,
except with Princess Haya, one friend, who
is still my friend.”
Haya has responded to Sheik Moham-
med’s suit by asking for a type of protection
usually used for domestic violence victims
and by requesting a forced marriage pro-
tection order for her children, even though
the sheik isn’t known to force children into
marriage—that’s not the way he operates.
What he allegedly did to Latifa, however, is
likely to be very important to Haya’s case,
and, if true, could establish in court that
any children of Haya returned to him in
Dubai are in danger.
Haya’s friend says that she thinks Haya
left Dubai to protect her own children, even
though her daughter, Sheikha Jalila bint
Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, is
“obviously Mo’s favorite.” “Here was Haya
raising this very intelligent daughter who
was getting to see the world through a more
regular set of eyes than his other kids, and
especially his other daughters,” she says.
“The last thing Haya would want is for her
daughter to be stuck in Dubai after leaving
university, and then shunted off to marry
a cousin. Haya would walk barefoot over
coals for those kids.”
The friend explains that Haya’s mother’s
death, when Haya was only two years old,
left a large emotional scar. “When Haya
had her daughter, she said, ‘I finally under-
stood how much my mother loved me.’ ”
The friend continues, “But Haya’s own
daughter could never have the life that she
had—live in Ireland and in France, learn to
do show jumping, drive her own horse trail-
er around, then go and get married. It was
never going to happen.”
Haigh, the attorney working on the cam-
paign to free Latifa, says what’s important
for people to understand about Dubai is
“just because they have big towers and do
concerts on the beach with Champagne, it
is not a democracy. It is a police state run by
a couple of men who are accountable to no
one. And that means that, ultimately, the
only one who can open the door to Latifa’s
cage is her father.” Haigh talks for a bit about
the experience Latifa and others had on the
boat when it was seized off the coast of
India. “There were six people on that boat,”
he says. “We got five people off, but for Lati-
fa, nothing works, because there’s no person
in charge of Sheik Mohammed.” nDubai Princess