0:00

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production

0:03

of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild

0:05

from aarin Manki listener Discretion

0:07

advised. Curled

0:12

inside the empty spare tire

0:14

compartment inside the trunk of an

0:17

Audi, beneath several blue

0:19

bags of heavy Ikia furniture,

0:22

a thirty two year old woman named

0:24

Litifa held her breath.

0:27

She was attempting to sneak across

0:29

the border from the United Arab

0:31

Emirates to Oman, where

0:34

hopefully she would make it onto

0:36

the boat that would bring her to international

0:39

waters, where she hoped

0:41

she would be free. Litifah's

0:44

full name was Sheikha Latifah

0:46

bint Muhammad bin Rashid al Muktum,

0:49

and she was the daughter of the ruling

0:52

Emir of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed.

0:55

For years, Latifah

0:57

had been studying and cultivating

0:59

relatelationships with people who

1:01

could help her escape her

1:03

repressive home. She even

1:06

trained in extreme sports

1:08

so that she would be ready for whatever

1:10

she needed to do. That was

1:13

how Latifah had met a woman named

1:15

Tina Yahayanen, a Finnish

1:17

woman living in Dubai, who

1:19

gave Latifah private capuera

1:22

lessons. Tina was the

1:24

one driving the Audi across

1:26

the border. She would stay with

1:28

Latifa every step on

1:30

the journey to freedom. Thankfully,

1:33

a guard waved the car across the

1:35

border into Oman without looking in

1:37

the spare tire compartment. But

1:40

the journey was far from over. Latifa

1:43

had made arrangements for a yacht

1:45

that could bring them to India, where,

1:48

hopefully, with the help of a fake

1:50

passport, she could fly to

1:52

the United States and claim asylum.

1:55

But first she needed to get sixteen

1:58

miles off shore to meet the yacht.

2:01

There was another contact who gave Latifa

2:03

and Tina a ride in his dinghy,

2:06

and though a storm pressed toward

2:08

them on the horizon and locals

2:10

warned the man not to go out in

2:13

his small boat, Latifa

2:15

had come too far to turn back.

2:18

Their tiny boat pressed forward

2:20

through violent waves, but

2:22

still it couldn't make it all the way

2:24

to the yacht, and so Latifah's

2:27

next contact, a former French

2:30

naval officer who had once escaped

2:32

Dubai himself, where he was charged

2:34

with embezzlement, rowed from

2:36

the yacht with another crew member to

2:39

the dinghy on jet skis. Latifa

2:42

and Tina both fell into the

2:44

water several times, but eventually

2:47

they managed to make it onto the back of

2:49

the jet skis and then safely

2:52

to the yacht. The yacht

2:54

was filthy and teeming with cockroaches,

2:57

but they were finally in international

3:00

waters, and when Latifah

3:02

slept on the deck, she could see

3:04

the stars. But freedom

3:07

wouldn't last long. They

3:09

noticed a ship was trailing them

3:11

when they were about thirty miles off the

3:14

coast of India. The next

3:16

night, Latifa heard gunshots

3:18

and boots on the deck. Commandos

3:22

tied Latifa up and injected

3:24

her with tranquilizers before

3:26

flying her back to the place She

3:28

had already risked everything to

3:31

try to escape. But that

3:33

wouldn't be the end of Latifah's story.

3:36

She had already risked everything to try

3:38

to get away, and now she

3:40

wanted the world to know what

3:43

she was going through. Latifa's

3:46

escape attempt and its aftermath

3:48

received international attention when

3:51

it occurred in twenty eighteen. I'm

3:53

thrilled to be talking with New Yorker staff

3:56

writer Heidi Blake, who wrote about

3:58

Latifah and an incredible article

4:00

in May of twenty twenty three, and

4:03

who's revisited the story and

4:05

the story of other royal women who have

4:07

attempted to escape the restrictive

4:10

lives they were born into in the UAE.

4:13

For The New Yorker's narrative podcast

4:15

series The Runaway Princesses.

4:19

I'm Dana Schwartz and this

4:21

is Noble Blood.

4:24

Heidi. Thank you so much for being here.

4:26

Thank you so much for having me.

4:28

I thought your piece last spring in The

4:30

New Yorker was just so extraordinary, and

4:32

you've continued writing about

4:34

Latifa and the women like her. But before

4:37

we get into Latifah's

4:39

twenty eighteen escape attempt, can

4:41

we go back a little bit and can you just tell

4:43

me a bit Latifa's father is

4:45

Sheikh Mohammed? What sort

4:48

of power does he have? What sort of his political

4:50

position in the United Arab Emirates.

4:53

See Shee Muhammad is the ruler

4:55

of Dubai and he's also the Prime Minister of

4:57

the United Arab Emirates, which

4:59

is a a major strategic ally to

5:02

Western governments. And so Checke

5:04

Muhammad is in this interesting position because he wields

5:06

absolute power at home and he also

5:09

has a huge amount of power and influence

5:11

on the world stage. And

5:13

you know, he's a big ally of the US

5:16

and of the UK. He's actually in the In the

5:18

UK, he's Britain's biggest private

5:20

landowner. He's the owner of the world's

5:22

biggest thoroughbred race horsing team,

5:25

which in the UK is a big deal because the late

5:27

Queen of England was a huge horse racing fan,

5:29

and he had cultivated this very valuable

5:32

friendship with her through their shared love of horse

5:34

racing, and so those things really play out

5:36

in this story that he has this extraordinary

5:39

degree of power and influence around the world

5:41

and particularly in the UK as

5:43

well as inside Dubai.

5:46

It seems like in recent years the

5:48

United Arab Emirates has sort of been making a public

5:51

push saying that they're advocating

5:53

for the right of women. Can you tell us

5:55

a little bit though, about what the conditions

5:58

are for women, some of the truth

6:01

to that sort of pr blit and then what the

6:03

conditions were for royal women.

6:05

Yeah, that's absolutely right, And it's one of the things about

6:07

the story that I sort of found most striking really

6:10

is that Chap Muhammad has been at pains to

6:12

position himself on the world

6:14

stage as a champion of women's rights

6:16

within the Middle East. He's

6:18

bowed to remove all of the hurdles that

6:20

women face in the UAE,

6:23

and he's passed a number of seemingly

6:25

progressive laws guaranteeing women, for

6:27

example, equal pay for equal work. He's

6:29

appointed nine women to cabinet positions

6:32

in the UAE's government, and many of those

6:34

initiatives are spearheaded by one of his daughters.

6:37

And so he has actually kind of wheeled

6:39

out his own female family members as sort

6:41

of emblems of his commitment to female advancement,

6:44

and that has won him

6:46

a lot of claudits in the West. He's been

6:48

sort of praised for his for

6:50

his progressive stance. But actually,

6:54

what I found when I began to report

6:56

on this is that women in Dubai's royal

6:58

family occupy this sort of possible

7:00

dual role where they're on the one hand,

7:03

held up as sort of symbols

7:05

of Shake Muhammad's, you know, great

7:07

beneficence towards women, but actually also

7:10

are expected to occupy very tightly

7:12

defined roles and if they step outside

7:14

of that, they can be brutally punished.

7:17

And the sort of importance for Shake Muhammad

7:19

in maintaining the

7:22

sort of illusion of absolute

7:24

power is it's essential

7:26

to him basically to make sure that women in his family

7:29

do not step out of line, are

7:31

not seen to be challenging his authority, and it's

7:33

sort of politically dangerous for him if that is

7:35

the case. And so when women have

7:37

challenged him, the consequences

7:39

for them have been absolutely dire.

7:42

One detail, just early on in your piece,

7:44

almost as coloring, but that I found so incredibly

7:46

striking was that Latifa was when

7:49

she was an infant, was given to

7:51

another of Schik Muhammad's wives

7:54

sort of as a gift, as an offering, almost

7:56

to raise.

7:57

Yeah, it's extraordinary. I mean, Chickmuhammad

7:59

has six wives and

8:02

around thirty children, and it's kind

8:04

of fascinating the way that these kids

8:07

were almost sort of a commodity. And

8:09

so Latifa and her brother

8:12

were both removed from their natural

8:14

mother as infants and given as a gift

8:16

to shake Muhammad's childless sister, who

8:19

by Latifa's account, because you know, I sort

8:21

of pieced this together from Latifa's own

8:24

writings over the course of about

8:26

a decade, where she really documented what her early

8:28

life had been like. By her description, her

8:30

aunt sort of almost collected stray children

8:33

in her palace, and so Latifa was raised

8:35

among dozens of other kids

8:37

who her aunt seemed to sort

8:39

of want to own, but then

8:42

who were kept confined to their bedrooms

8:44

and not able to go out and to play

8:47

and lived really very sort

8:49

of miserable and straightened lives. And she

8:51

wrote really movingly about just

8:53

spending days at the window kind

8:55

of watching the world go by outside. And

8:58

one image that just really stuck with me was

9:01

she wrote about how she would dream over

9:03

and over again that she was flying a kite so

9:05

huge it would carry her into the sky because

9:08

she was just desperate to get away,

9:10

and that was a preoccupation which really

9:13

defined most of

9:15

her childhood and then also her adult

9:17

life.

9:18

So let's fast forward to Latifah's

9:21

twenty eighteen escape attempt.

9:23

What were those preparations like

9:25

for her? Obviously, her father has so much

9:27

power, so it was an incredibly

9:30

dangerous prospect for her.

9:32

Right exactly, And she knew what the

9:34

stakes were because she'd seen what happened to

9:36

other women in the royal family who tried

9:38

to escape. So her own sister, Shanza,

9:41

twenty years earlier, had tried to run away on a

9:43

trip to the UK and had since been

9:46

captured and imprisoned and held at the Heavy Sedation

9:48

in the palace. Her aunt Bushra

9:50

had been kidnapped from Britain after antagonizing

9:54

Dubai's ruler, and had been brought

9:56

back to Dubai, where she died suspiciously.

9:59

And so Latifa Is sort of knew what the

10:01

risks were. She herself had previously

10:03

tried to escape to get help for her sister Shamza,

10:06

and had been captured and imprisoned for years

10:08

and beaten so badly that all the bones

10:10

in her feet had been broken during prolonged

10:13

torture sessions. So she knew

10:16

that the risks were huge. But she wrote again

10:18

and again to her supporters that she

10:20

was prepared to countenance death. She was

10:22

so determined to get away. She said,

10:24

it's freedom or death and nothing in between.

10:27

So her determination is one of the things that's so

10:29

striking in the sort of letters

10:32

and messages and writings that I

10:34

got hold of. And she actually spent

10:36

seven years planning her second escape

10:39

attempt, and she planned it in

10:41

extraordinary details. She recruited a team

10:43

to help her, two martial arts

10:45

instructors and a

10:47

former French naval officer who

10:50

was to captain the yacht that she escaped

10:52

on, and they spent years

10:54

deliberating over how she would get out

10:56

of Dubai and over the border into

10:58

Oman, which was where she was going to escape onto

11:01

this yacht. They spent years practicing

11:03

her doing an underwater

11:06

swim using an underwater

11:08

scooter and a scuba rebreather to

11:10

try and get over the border that way, and ultimately decided

11:12

that was too risky, and so eventually

11:15

they decided to smuggle her over the border into

11:17

Oman in the boot of a car before

11:19

she used a dinghy and then jet skis to get

11:21

onto this yacht that she used

11:23

to make her getaway. So yeah, it was an

11:26

escape attempt of just extraordinary

11:28

daring.

11:29

Obviously, as your story tells,

11:32

when she was about thirty miles off the coast of

11:34

India, commanders stormed

11:36

the yacht and Latifa was

11:39

captured. What went wrong in this

11:41

escape.

11:42

Well, I guess there were sort

11:44

of a variety of things that led

11:46

up to Latifa's capture, But ultimately,

11:49

I think you sort of realize when

11:51

you look into this that when you're up against

11:54

Shake Muhammad, no one really has

11:56

a chance, and you know, his

11:58

global power exten and so widely

12:01

that really I think sort

12:03

of you know, in retrospect, Latifa's hope

12:05

that she was going to be able to get away was

12:08

pretty fanciful. So her

12:10

father had managed to intercept

12:13

her communications from on board the yacht and was

12:15

able to pinpoint exactly

12:18

where she was. He'd issued

12:20

red notices through Interpol, the international

12:22

policing agency, accusing the people who were helping

12:24

her of having her kidnapped, to enlist

12:27

the support of you know, international

12:29

police forces. And

12:31

he had then put in a call to his

12:33

friend and ally, the Prime Minister of India and the Randa

12:36

Mody, and persuaded Mody to send

12:38

armed commandos to storm the yacht off the coast

12:40

of India and capture Latifa in

12:43

exchange for an arms dealer

12:45

who was placed in Dubai, who Naranda

12:47

Mody wanted extra dising back to India.

12:50

And so this whole kind of deal was stitched up

12:52

between two world leaders

12:54

and Latifa was captured

12:57

and dragged away back to Dubai just around

12:59

a week after is setting off.

13:02

When she was tranquilized and brought

13:04

back to Dubai, what do we know about her

13:06

treatment.

13:07

Well, so she went dark

13:09

for a long time after the yacht that she

13:12

was on was stormed and her friends and supporters

13:14

had no idea what had happened to her. Her friend

13:16

Tina just describes seeing Latifa

13:19

being dragged off the side of the boat shouting

13:21

shoot me now, don't take me back, and

13:23

then they heard nothing from her for about

13:25

a year. Only after a

13:27

year had gone by did Latfa supporters

13:30

get a message from a woman who

13:32

was attending to Latifa where she was

13:34

being held, and then

13:36

they kind of began this extraordinary correspondence

13:39

where Latifa was being held in prison but

13:41

had a secret line of communication via

13:43

this maid back to her

13:45

friends who were based in the UK and

13:48

was able to document exactly what had

13:50

happened to her, and she described being

13:52

dragged off this boat, tranquilized,

13:55

thrown into a desert prison where

13:58

she came under concerted pressure

14:00

to recount a testimony

14:03

that she'd published online accusing

14:05

her father of all sorts of crimes during her escape,

14:08

and to kind of tell the world that she

14:10

was fine and that she was

14:12

living freely in Dubai, and that she was not you

14:15

know that she no longer she no longer wished to leave the country,

14:18

and she resisted that for years

14:21

during this imprisonment, she absolutely refused to

14:23

cooperate with that. But you

14:25

know, eventually, in these these letters

14:27

and messages videos that she was sharing

14:29

with her supporters, you kind of see her

14:31

will power begin to ebb away. She

14:34

talks about, you know, how she's being guarded around

14:36

the clock, She's not being allowed to open the window.

14:39

She feels she's dying a very slow death by suffocation.

14:43

Her father's guards are increasingly appearing,

14:45

accompanied by a psychiatrist who's putting

14:47

pressure on her, ramping up the psychological

14:49

pressure on her to crack. They're telling her

14:52

she'll never see the sunlight again. She

14:54

lives constantly in fear of being killed

14:56

by her father's guards, and I

14:58

think ultimately you begin to see

15:01

just the cumulative pressure become too

15:03

much for her to bear.

15:05

In recent years, there have been public

15:08

appearances of Latifa out

15:10

in the world, and two UN

15:13

Human Rights Watch officials have

15:15

met with her publicly. How

15:17

much credence do you give to those meetings

15:20

of the UN?

15:21

Well, yeah, it's I mean, it's interesting. The

15:24

sort of the

15:26

way the story sort of resolved itself

15:28

in the end is that after decades

15:32

of absolutely refusing to countenance

15:35

that she would ever accept a life in Dubay under

15:37

her father's control, and you know, saying again

15:39

and again, I will never accept that, and

15:43

I will always be imprisoned as long as

15:45

I'm here, and I will never be free until I'm

15:47

outside Dubai. Latifa suddenly

15:50

lost all contact with her supporters and then soon

15:52

after started appearing in what appeared to be

15:55

kind of carefully stage managed

15:57

social media photographs and then

15:59

ultimately had this, you

16:01

know, these meetings with UN Human Rights

16:04

officials, and they're sort

16:06

of complicated because it happened in two stages. So one

16:08

of those took place during her imprisonment. She

16:11

was photographed with Mary Robinson, who was the former

16:13

UN Human Rights Commissioner and who

16:16

released a statement afterwards with photographs

16:18

of Latifa and said to the media that Latifa

16:21

was mentally ill, regretted her

16:23

attempt to escape, and was now safe in the loving

16:25

care of her family. Mary Robinson subsequently

16:28

retracted that and said she'd been horribly tricked

16:30

into saying those things after videos

16:32

of Latifa appeared in which

16:34

she accused her father of holding her hostage and said

16:36

she was a prisoner. But then after

16:39

she a second time, lost contact with her supporters,

16:41

and then started to appear in these social media

16:44

posts. She met with Michelle Bachelet,

16:46

who is Mary Robinson's successor as

16:48

U and Human Rights Commissioner, who released

16:52

a statement to say that Latifa had assured her that she

16:54

was well and living as she wishes to and

16:57

just wished, you know, wish to be left alone to live her

16:59

life in peace. I spoke

17:02

to Michelle Bachelet

17:04

after that statement, and she

17:06

acknowledged to me that while she'd said

17:08

that, actually she was far from convinced that Latifa

17:11

was actually safe and well.

17:14

Certain couldn't rule out that Latifa had come to

17:16

this meeting with her under durest and had been put under

17:18

pressure to say those things. It's

17:20

certainly hard for me, having spent

17:23

many months kind of immersed in Latifa's

17:26

writings and the recordings that she left

17:28

behind, and just those

17:30

sort of decades of determination on her part,

17:33

never to give in, never to surrender, never

17:35

to accept a life under her father's

17:37

control. It's very hard to imagine

17:39

that she has suddenly, of her own

17:41

free will, completely reversed

17:44

course and all of that and decided that she really does

17:46

just want to live in Dubai. You know, I think clearly

17:49

the stance that she has

17:51

now taken is at

17:54

least a product of years of

17:57

torture, imprisonment and abuse, an

18:00

extreme duress. And of course it's

18:02

possible that she's being

18:04

outright coerced and you know,

18:07

is being threatened into saying these things. I

18:09

think, given what we know about the way Shapemhammad

18:11

has treated his daughters and other women in the family,

18:14

nothing is off limits in terms

18:16

of what he would be willing to do to crush

18:19

their rebellions, to bring them to heal.

18:22

And so I don't think anyone

18:25

should rest assured that Latifa

18:27

is well and is living freely.

18:30

One thing that is just very clear

18:33

in your story is that Latifa's family is

18:35

just incredibly powerful and I will say

18:37

frightening. Were you nervous at

18:40

all investigating and publishing

18:42

your story?

18:43

I think I was certainly conscious

18:46

that shap Muhammad's government has

18:48

no compunction about sort of digital

18:51

surveillance on journalists and things

18:53

like that. You know, one of the things that came

18:56

out in the course of a

18:58

court battle between shape Mohammad and his his

19:00

youngest wife, Princess High who's another princess

19:02

who ran away from him to the UK

19:05

seeking protection. Was that Shane

19:07

Muhammad had used his you know, his intelligence agencies

19:09

had hacked Higher's phone and the

19:11

phones of her lawyers and various supporters

19:14

with the Pegasus Israeli

19:17

spyware, and that subsequently

19:19

some supporters of Latifa's found that Pegasus

19:22

was also on their phones. And so I was

19:24

conscious that that sort of thing was certainly a

19:27

possibility of not a likelihood, and was

19:29

therefore sort of careful about digital

19:32

security to the extent

19:34

that any of us really can be these

19:36

days. But you know, it's yeah,

19:39

I mean, I think beyond

19:41

that, I just feel incredibly

19:44

lucky to live in a country where,

19:46

for all, for all Britain's many

19:49

failians, I think, you know, it's

19:52

a pretty safe place to go about your

19:54

work as a journalist. I think it would have

19:56

been quite a different thing traveling to de Buy and doing

19:58

reporting there, because I think there are a real risks

20:01

to journalists in that region, and you

20:03

know, but I'm lucky to operate in a pretty safe

20:05

country for this kind of work. And

20:08

so I wasn't I wasn't too nervous

20:10

for my sort of physical safety, but certainly, yeah, conscious

20:12

of the kind of digital security side of things you

20:15

alluded to.

20:16

Princess Hio, as you said, was Shiekmhammad's

20:19

youngest wife, was involved in a court bettal

20:21

and ultimately was able to win a

20:23

settlement and win custody of their

20:26

children to live in England. Can you speak

20:28

a little bit about her experience.

20:31

Yeah, Princess Hia's case is a really interesting

20:33

one because she's kind of the one who got

20:36

away, I mean literally the one who

20:38

got away. I think that that is really

20:42

due entirely to her independent

20:45

status as the daughter of

20:47

the former king of Jordan, a member of the Jordanian

20:49

royal family, and a woman who, unlike

20:52

other women in Shamhamon's family, actually had a

20:54

considerable amount of power and status in her own

20:57

right. And you know, while

21:00

U is an important ally to Western governments,

21:02

so is Jordan. That comes with a certain

21:04

inviolability. I think that wasn't there

21:07

for Shakemhammad's own children. So when

21:09

Princess hire ran away to the

21:12

UK in twenty nineteen with her two young

21:14

children, she was actually afforded

21:17

the diplomatic position at the Jordan embassy, which

21:19

gave her immunity and protection. She

21:22

was then able sort of under that cover to

21:25

apply to the courts for court protection. Her

21:27

children were made wards of the Court in the

21:29

UK, which meant they couldn't be removed from the country

21:31

without court permission. She was then

21:34

able to bring a claim against

21:36

Shapemuhammad in the British courts, which

21:38

actually provided a forum for a lot of the evidence

21:40

of his abuse of his daughters to come out,

21:43

because she cited his abuse

21:45

of both Latifa and her sister Shamza

21:47

as evidence of the threat that Shae Muhammad

21:49

posed to her and to her own children. And

21:51

so those masters were adjudicated in a British court.

21:53

The judge held a kind of fact finding process

21:56

and ultimately ruled that indeed Chich Muhammad

21:58

had kidnapped and in prison Shamza

22:00

and Latifa. And so that was kind

22:02

of an extraordinary development in this story, this

22:05

moment where one of these women was actually

22:07

able to get out and get the truth out there.

22:09

And it was kind of interesting because Hire had played

22:12

a pretty ambiguous role in all

22:14

of this up until that point, because

22:17

she had been the person who arranged

22:19

this lunch between Latifa and Mary Robinson

22:23

for the product of which were these photographs, and

22:25

then this statement by Mary Robinson

22:27

that Latifa was mentally unwell and basically

22:30

shouldn't be believed and Hire had

22:32

sort of therefore been part of this propaganda campaign

22:35

by Ship Muhammad's government to try to

22:37

dispel international concern about

22:39

Latifa, and then shortly afterwards

22:42

actually ran away herself and said

22:44

help me, I'm in danger, and

22:46

actually by way of proved

22:48

look what he's doing to Latifa, and so

22:51

you know, she kind of there was this extraordinary

22:53

reversal on her part and so's,

22:56

yeah, she's a fascinating character in all of this, and

22:58

she's still living in the She

23:01

actually won the biggest dull settlement

23:03

in British legal history against Shapemhammed,

23:06

and yeah, really

23:08

sort of delivered a pretty

23:10

resounding blow to his reputation in this

23:13

court action that she was able to bring in all of the

23:15

appalling abuses that it brought to light.

23:19

Latifa's sister, Shamsa, as you alluded

23:21

to, had also attempted to escape

23:24

when she was in England, and she was unsuccessful

23:27

and wasn't able to claim asylum

23:29

in England. Can you briefly just just

23:32

walk us through sort of what Chamser's escape

23:34

attempt had been like.

23:37

Yeah, absolutely, I mean, so Chansa's

23:39

escape is really the sort of inciting incident

23:42

that set off a whole chain of events here that ultimately

23:44

ended up with Latifa repeatedly trying

23:46

to escape herself, because Lativa's escape

23:48

attempts were to try to get help for Shamsa

23:51

and Chanza had clashed

23:54

with shape Mohammed increasingly as

23:56

she kind of grew

23:58

older as a teenager. She wanted

24:01

to study, she wants she wants to travel,

24:03

she wants to go to university. She didn't

24:05

want to wear the a buyers, she wanted to be able to drive,

24:08

she wanted you know, those

24:11

those those sorts of freedoms that women

24:14

in the West enjoy, and

24:16

she was denied all of that, and increasingly

24:19

sort of had this strained relationship with her father, and so

24:21

ultimately decided, when she was in her late

24:24

teens that she would run away. And she

24:26

waited till she and and

24:28

some other members of the family had traveled to Shakee

24:30

Mohammed's summer house in the UK. She

24:33

was staying there with with

24:36

the entourage, and she waited

24:39

till after dark one night and then

24:41

slipped away and managed to find

24:45

a range rover that had been left unattended

24:47

in the ground, and she drove it out to the perimeter

24:50

of the estate, dumped the car and

24:52

slipped through a gate on foot and

24:55

dumped her mobile phone and then just sort of disappeared

24:57

into the night, and it was it

24:59

was weeks before she was tracked

25:01

down. She managed to kind of stay on

25:03

the run, find friends

25:06

to stay with, and she actually managed to contact

25:08

an immigration lawyer, a guy called

25:11

Paul Simon, and asked him to help her get

25:13

asylum in the UK. She kind of walked

25:15

into this office of this small time lawyer and

25:17

said, I'm a runaway princess

25:19

from the Dubai royal family, please can you help me?

25:22

Which must have been a pretty extraordinary walking but

25:25

he basically advised her that he wasn't going to be able to

25:27

help her because she didn't have a passport. She'd

25:29

left that behind at the house, and so she was

25:31

sort of out on her own, and in her

25:33

desperation, she turned to one

25:36

of her father's guards in the UK, a

25:38

guy who she had sort of come to trust

25:41

over the course of her summer's there, and asked

25:43

him to help her. And instead of helping

25:46

her, he lured her into

25:48

a kidnapping. She was then dragged

25:51

back to her father's estate and put on a helicopter

25:54

and then a private jet back to Dubai,

25:56

where she was held

25:59

for decades under

26:01

heavy sedation and under constant guard,

26:04

and as far as we know, still

26:07

is being held following

26:10

that attempt all these years ago.

26:12

I was about to say, we've gotten these sort

26:14

of heavily manicured photos

26:17

on social media of Latifa,

26:19

but is there any evidence that

26:22

Chamsa is alive.

26:24

No, Shamsa really has sort

26:26

of disappeared without trace. The

26:29

last chen pinpoint Shamsa's

26:31

whereabouts is that there is an extraordinary

26:34

record that Latifa created of a meeting

26:36

between the two sisters, which

26:39

was in the summer of twenty nineteen in

26:41

their father's desert compound. And

26:44

they were actually both summoned to

26:46

meet shae Mohammad because they've been

26:48

called to testify in Princess Hya's case

26:50

in London and he

26:52

wanted to make sure that they didn't do this,

26:56

and so he summoned them both to ask

26:58

them to provide a statement say they didn't wish to testify.

27:01

When they refused to comply, he just wrote

27:03

to the court on their behalf and said, my daughters have no wish

27:06

to have any part in this, but Shamsu

27:08

and Nativa sort of had this private moment together,

27:11

and it's one of the things. We've just released a

27:13

podcast series about this story.

27:15

And one of the things for me that sort of most compelling

27:18

is to hear these extraordinary

27:21

tapes that Theatifa made during her imprisonment,

27:23

and that some of these tapes after the meeting with Shamsa

27:25

are some of the most haunting for me

27:28

because just the raw pain

27:30

and emotion in her voice as she describes

27:33

this moment of seeing her sister, who

27:35

she just adored and who she'd fought for and

27:39

she tried twice to escape

27:41

for to try and get help, she'd risked her life for.

27:44

When this coming, this brief coming together of these

27:46

two women before they were wrenched apart again, it's just

27:48

absolutely heartrending. And after that,

27:51

we have no record of what happened

27:53

to Shamsa. None of the Royal insiders I

27:55

spoke with were able to shed any light on

27:57

where she was or knew where she was. When

28:00

I spoke with Michelle Bashade, the former You and

28:02

Human Rights Commissioner who met with Latifa, She

28:05

said that something that had really struck her was that Latifa

28:08

was reasonably composed during their meeting, but

28:10

when she asked about Shamsa, Latifa

28:12

had become suddenly very

28:16

firm and had said, no, I will not discuss

28:18

my sister. I will I'm here to talk

28:20

about myself, and I will not ask answer questions

28:22

about her. And it seemed odd

28:26

that she was. There was such a hard line

28:28

there, like there was just something there that

28:30

Latifa was absolutely not going

28:32

to go near. And so, you

28:35

know, one dreads to think what Shamsa's

28:39

situation might be. You know, certainly

28:41

for the decades since she attempted to escape

28:44

as a teenager, it has been absolutely

28:46

dire.

28:47

And one thing that I found uniquely

28:50

heartbreaking and a little frightening

28:53

that you detailed in your investigation was

28:56

how when English

28:58

detective inspectors were trying

29:00

to look into this case, they were fairly

29:03

continually stymied by higher

29:06

up saying it's none of our concern. Was

29:08

that for political reasons?

29:11

Yeah, I mean that was one of the sort of real

29:15

central mysteries of all of this was sort of what

29:17

happened to these attempts by the police to investigate

29:21

you know, in Chansa's case,

29:23

she showed extraordinary resourcefulness

29:25

as an eighteen year old on the run, and that she managed

29:28

to instruct this lawyer to act

29:30

for her, and then having been kidnapped,

29:32

she managed to get hold of a phone and

29:34

get a message to her lawyer saying

29:36

that she wanted the police to be involved, and

29:38

her lawyer then decided to ignore

29:41

this and do nothing about it. She

29:43

then, after another six months of imprisonment,

29:46

managed again to get a message to her lawyer

29:48

and this time the police. You know, the police were

29:50

notified that she was alleging that she'd been kidnapped

29:53

from the UK and I was a

29:55

detective who attempted to investigate.

29:58

But he described how you

30:00

just were sort of blocked at every turn and ultimately

30:02

was told that he wasn't going to be allowed

30:04

to travel to Dubai to try to investigate

30:07

shams in situation, and so he

30:09

decided to kind of step away from the case.

30:12

And you know, he certainly felt

30:14

clearly that that was politically motivated. You

30:16

know, he said to me, because you're a rich

30:18

and powerful enough person, you can break any law you

30:20

like in our country and get away with it, and

30:23

that that had always really frustrated

30:25

him. And that was something I heard from

30:27

multiple police officers and also

30:30

former government officials. I spoke to you, that the

30:32

relationship with the UAE was just too strategically

30:35

important for the government to compromise,

30:38

you know, over the individual

30:40

fate of one or two or three princesses,

30:43

and they just weren't prepared

30:46

to go to the map for these women. They kind of viewed

30:48

it as a private family matter. And

30:51

officials I spoke to you were pretty you know, pretty

30:53

confident that these sorts of things, you

30:55

know, blow over, and that they knew

30:58

that. One of them said that, you know, when and

31:00

these sort of things blew up with these members

31:02

of Shapemhammad's family. You know, they felt

31:04

fairly confident they would be a forty eight hour wonder

31:06

and then everybody would move on and forget.

31:09

And I think that's right, you know, I think they

31:12

did get away with allowing this to happen and

31:16

shape Muhammad continues to enjoy a very

31:18

cordial relationship with the British government

31:20

and you know, and is

31:23

esteemed on the world stage as you know, a

31:26

progressive leader in the Middle East. And

31:28

despite all of this, that continues to be the case.

31:31

Well, that is a lot to think about.

31:34

Heidi Blake. To read more, read

31:36

her incredible investigative reporting

31:39

in The New Yorker and listen to The New Yorker's

31:41

brand new podcast series, The Runaway

31:43

Princesses. Thank you so much for being

31:45

here.

31:46

Thank you so much, Daniel. This is a real pleasure.

31:53

Noble Blood is a production of

31:56

iHeartRadio and Grim and

31:58

Mild from Aaron Manki. Noble

32:00

Blood is created and hosted by

32:03

me Dana Shwarts, with additional

32:05

writing and researching by Hannah

32:07

Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira

32:10

Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori

32:12

Goodman. The show is edited

32:14

and produced by Noemi Griffin

32:17

and rima Il Kahali, with

32:19

supervising producer Josh Thain

32:22

and executive producers Aaron Manke,

32:24

Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

32:27

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

32:30

visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple

32:32

Podcasts, or wherever you listen

32:34

to your favorite shows.