Princess Latifa: Dubai ruler’s daughter is well - says UN human rights chief

 The daughter of the ruler of Dubai, who had said she was being held hostage in videos aired last year, has assured the UN high commissioner for human rights that she is well during a meeting in Paris.

The meeting, which took place on an unspecified date at Princess Latifa’s request, was revealed on Friday – a year after videos were released by British media where she is seen saying she was being held hostage and feared for her life.

“Latifa conveyed to the high commissioner that she was well & expressed her wish for respect for her privacy,” the high commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, said in a tweet, which included a picture of the two women on a Paris street.

The tweet added that Latifa’s legal adviser had organised the meeting and that Bachelet and Latifa had met in private.

Bachelet’s office didn’t respond to a request for details of the meeting, or whether Bachelet took the princess’s comment at face value.

Latifa, the 36-year-old daughter of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, had said in June last year that she was free to travel.

Sheikh Mohammed is the vice-president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is one of the seven members.

Latifa made an unsuccessful attempt to flee the emirate in March 2018, escaping by boat with the help of friends, before being hauled back.

In February 2021, the BBC aired clips it said were filmed roughly a year after she was captured and returned to Dubai, showing her crouched in a corner of what she says is a bathroom.

“I’m a hostage and this villa has been converted into a jail,” she says in one mobile phone video.

Bachelet’s office, along with NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as the UK foreign ministry, had closely followed the matter and sought proof that the princes was still alive.

Dubai’s royal family had insisted that Latifa was being “cared for at home”.

~ Via The Guardian