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One night, when Latifa and Tina were on board the yacht Nostromo, a few days after their escape from Dubai, the sea grew calmer. The two of them were out on deck. They had on hoodies against the chill. And they were looking at the sky. You could see all the stars. It was beautiful. And you could obviously see the light on the waves as well. So it was really, really beautiful. And Latifa suggested that they stay out there all night instead of going down to their cabin.
Tina told her, oh, come on, it's cold. It'll be more comfortable in our beds. You'll have plenty of opportunities to do things like this now. So they went down to their cabin.
It sounds like maybe you regret that a bit now, is that something that... Yeah, a little bit. I was like, yes, I should have done it because obviously it's the same like anything in life, you know. Sometimes certain opportunities just come once. And I'd like just to do it rather than regret not having done something right.
You're listening to The Runaway Princesses from In the Dark and The New Yorker. It's a story of why women in Dubai's royal family keep trying to run away and what happens to them when they do. I'm Madeline Barron. This is Episode 3, A Nice Lunch. My colleague Heidi Blake obtained texts and emails sent by the band of conspirators on board Nostromo as they were crossing the Arabian Sea on their way to India. And she pieced together their story.
When we left off last episode, it was the end of the day Latifah made her escape. She'd been traveling since dawn. She'd been hidden in a car trunk. She and Tina had been tossed around in a dinghy in huge waves. They'd been picked up by jet skis, and they'd finally reached the yacht. So Heidi, tell me about that moment when they finally climb on board.
So they reached the boat at sunset and Tina told me that once they'd clambered aboard, they hugged each other, but they were just too exhausted and nauseated to celebrate. Tina remembers that she took a shower because she was soaked in seawater, so was Latifa. But after that, she was just knocked sideways by a migraine and Latifa was violently seasick for the first couple of days.
And who else is on the boat with them apart from Hervé? There's a small Filipino crew, but it's not a luxury cruise. Tina said that when she and Latifa were well enough to come out of their cabin, they found that Hervé's boat was filthy. There were cockroaches in the food supplies, and Tina said they mostly lived on porridge. I remember cooking one day. We had boiled potatoes with Heinz beans at home.
I think at first, at least, they were pretty exuberant. Latifa texted a friend from aboard the boat saying,
She also wrote farewell messages to her mother and her siblings. And she posted a triumphant message on Instagram saying, I have escaped UAE after being trapped for 18 years. Why is she doing this at this point? Like she's not actually, I mean, she's still on the boat. She's still in the middle of her escape.
I had exactly the same thought. Like, isn't this really risky? Isn't this the sort of thing that Shamsa did that got her into trouble? But it seems like Latifa figured that her family were going to know she was gone as soon as she missed her curfew, which is at 10pm. And she wanted to make clear that she hadn't been kidnapped, that she'd left Dubai of her own free will, and that they should just let her go. There was no need to mount some kind of rescue effort.
But soon after they set out, Herve did something that seriously complicated that picture. He contacted a lawyer in Florida and asked her to draw up a settlement agreement demanding $300 million from Sheikh Mohammed on Latifa's behalf.
Now, Latifa didn't have a bank account, so Herve told the lawyer that the money should be transferred to his account in the Philippines. And he promised that he would split it evenly with Latifa and Tina. Was Latifa on board with this? Well, Herve said that actually the settlement had been her idea, and that his share of $100 million was his payment for helping her escape. He really denies that he pressured Latifa in any way. But Latifa...
But Latifa told Tina that Hervé's mind seemed to be always on money and profit. And she'd gone along with the plan just to appease him, knowing that her father would never pay anyway, so it didn't really matter. So they're sending all these messages from on board, posting on Instagram, definitely not trying to slip away quietly. No. In fact, they wanted publicity. Hervé and Latifa were also trying to reach journalists as Latifa was making her escape.
Herve had promised to use his contacts in the international media to publicise her story so that the world would be watching if her father tried to retaliate. When they were finally on board Nostromo, he'd reached out to people he said he knew at the BBC and the Associated Press, but he'd got no reply. So instead, Herve put Latifa in touch with a group called Detained in Dubai. They advocate for people who've run into trouble with the law in the Emirates and he'd worked with them before.
Latifa looked them up from on board the yacht and Tina said she was dismayed when she saw that the group seemed to have kind of a low profile. They had hardly any Facebook followers, she said. But she got in touch. I have copies of audio messages Latifa sent to detained in Dubai from on board the boat just a few days after setting sail.
She tells them about Shamza and how she'd decided that the only way to help her was to escape. So now I left. I'm out of the UAE, but I'm not out of danger at all. I'm still far from being safe. So I think some kind of publication would be good. I've already contacted some major newspapers. I don't know what else to say, really. I just hope it all goes OK because there's so many people involved who are helping me to get out.
And I hope everybody just ends up OK. Latifa's messages landed in the inbox of detained in Dubai's CEO, Radha Sterling. And she told me that she had suffered years of abuse, that she wanted to be free and that she had gone to great lengths to make her way out of the UAE. Latifa started asking me whether I can put this in the media as soon as possible because she thought that that would protect her.
But Rana said that first they had to figure out whether this whole thing was a hoax. It sounded like the kind of email you get from a scammer who claims to be a foreign prince. You know, because it was such a convoluted story and it's the first time that, you know, I'd heard a daughter of a ruler complain about their own abuse. And I think myself, like most other people, would assume that he at least treats his family quite well, that he at least treats his daughters well. So it seemed almost unbelievable to me. I should add that Sheikh Mohammed denies abusing his daughters.
Radha knew the media wouldn't print anything without some sort of evidence. Detained in Dubai set about verifying that Latifa was who she said she was. By then, Latifa was getting more and more uneasy about how her escape was going.
She'd had texts from friends back in Dubai who were saying that they'd been rounded up and questioned about her disappearance. And then they heard that Christian, Tina's friend who'd taken them out to see in the dinghy, had been arrested. The concern obviously arised because, you know, Christian was caught. Like, what is he going to tell them? Is he going to tell them what our plan is? Does he know what our plan is, you know?
And there were other ominous signs. A week into the voyage, Erve spotted another ship, apparently tailing them. And a small plane was circling overhead. And then Tina says that Erve told them he was running low on fuel. He started talking to us a little bit later, like after a couple of days, that I'm trying to arrange my friend to do the fueling and we're both like, what?
How do you run out of fuel in a situation like this? I mean, this has been a plot that has been like literally years in the making, and then they just run out of fuel? Well, it's a great question. So when I asked Hervé about this, he insisted that he had enough fuel to reach the original destination. But now he was worried that they were going to have to change routes because it seemed like they were being follicked. He also, by the way, insisted that his boat was immaculate and that cockroaches are just an inevitable part of seafaring.
But in any case, after a week at sea when they were 30 miles off the coast of India, Herve sent a text to Radha saying, "I am running out." He said that in a couple of days his petrol tank would be empty. Tina said that Latifa was growing increasingly silent. She was really quiet. I think it's a lot to do with the fact that she was really annoyed with Herve and she was like getting increasingly nervous about the situation.
All of them were afraid that Latifa had been located. Ebe texted Radha, they will kill her. On March 4th, about a week after they left Oman, Tina and Latifa went down to their cabin to get ready for bed. We're like, OK, let's get some sleep. It was like, you know, quite, quite late. And then, you know, I think Latifa was brushing her teeth.
The two women heard something that sounded like gunshots and then heavy boots overhead. And Latifa said to Tina, they found me.
Latifa was trying to send messages asking for help, but then the Wi-Fi was cut off. The two women locked themselves in the bathroom and they were hugging each other. Latifa kept saying she was sorry. And then they started smelling smoke. The cabin started feeling some sort of smoke. And it started coming into the bathroom as well from the vents. And then somebody was knocking on the door.
They put wet towels over their faces to block the smoke and then they stumbled out of the bathroom.
It was completely dark as they made their way up the stairs towards the deck. Tina said the red laser sights of guns sliced through the darkness in all directions.
There was a pool of blood at the top of the stairs. She didn't know whose it was. Men in masks grabbed her and dragged her to the front of the boat. They zip-tied her hands. And that, they basically put me on the floor. And Latif was there as well. And they were threatening to shoot me and like, close your eyes or we shoot you. She says someone told her to take her last breath. And I was thinking, yeah, that's it. This is the way my life is ending.
She says Latifa was yelling at the men to leave her friend alone. The commandos were yelling, who is Latifa? Someone grabbed Latifa by the hair and yanked her head up. He showed her to someone else and said, is this her? Latifa shouted over and over that she wanted asylum, but the men didn't listen. Then she was taken away, kicking and screaming. Latifa fought and fought.
She was kicking and hitting and clinging to the gunnels. And she yelled out, don't take me back, just kill me now. And then Tina watched as they dragged her friend over the side of the boat. And Latifa was gone. How did Sheikh Mohammed manage to find them? Well, he'd used every apparatus of state power to locate his daughter. His officials had rounded up Latifa's friends and her accomplices. And his intelligence agents had intercepted her communications from Nostromo.
Then the UAE had got Interpol, the international police agency, to issue red notices for Latifa's accomplices, for Christian and Erbe and Tina. That's like an international arrest warrant, accusing them of kidnapping her. When the yacht was eventually located off the coast of India, Sheikh Mohammed called in a favour from a powerful ally. He spoke personally with the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and they hashed out a deal.
Modi wanted an arms dealer who was based in Dubai, and Sheikh Mohammed agreed to extradite this guy in exchange for his daughter's capture. The Indian government deployed boats, helicopters, and a team of armed commandos to storm Nostromo and carry Latifa away. Wow. And what happens to Hervé and Tina and the crew? Well, they were all taken back to the UAE by sea, and Hervé was in really rough shape.
Tina says that when Ewe did come to, he was terrified. He was sure he was going to be killed. That was the biggest concern for me, that it had all failed.
The trip took days, and Tina says as they travelled back over the ocean, she would just stare at the waves and cry. When they reached Dubai, they were blindfolded and then locked up in separate cells. Tina didn't know where Latifa was, or whether she was even still alive. And she couldn't call anyone. Her family had no idea where she was. There were no witnesses to her capture, no news about it. Everyone on board Nostromo had just vanished. We'll be right back.
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Rana Sterling, the head of Detained in Dubai, was at home in Spain, still puzzling over the strange case of the runaway princess, when she received Latifa's SOS messages from aboard Nostromo. She said, oh my God, I can hear gunshots. I can hear men outside. I don't know what's going on. Then suddenly her phone, just a couple of minutes later, her phone got completely cut off and none of my messages were getting through and nothing came through to me.
Radha figured that if Latifa's father had sent men after her, then her captors probably had her phone. So she sent messages to it, hoping that they'd see them. Along the lines of, you know, we're aware of Latifa, we're aware of her facial bit, we know what's happening.
if we don't get confirmation that she is alive and safe and well, we're immediately going to release this story to the world's media and make reports to the authorities. And I hope that at least if they saw that and they were planning to execute them, they would cancel that plan because they realise, OK, there's other people outside who know what's going on, so we're going to get exposed. At the time, Radha was working with a lawyer named David Haig, who'd been imprisoned in Dubai himself.
He'd been working for an investment fund there when he'd had a falling out with his bosses and they'd accused him of fraud and slander. After that, he was held for two years in Dubai jails, where he said he was beaten and raped and forced to sign a document in Arabic that appeared to be a false confession. David lives in Cornwall now. He was driving me to his seafront cottage when he told me about the night that those SOS messages from Latifa came in.
He said he and Radha didn't want to do anything public until they knew what had happened. For all they knew, the Nostromo might have been hit by pirates. And if Latifa hadn't been captured by her father's men, they didn't want to give away where she was. I remember waiting, thinking, right, what do we do now? What do we do now? Where are they? What have they done to them? Are they dead? Are they not dead? No one's going to believe this. What the hell do we do now?
Detained in Dubai filed a missing persons report with Scotland Yard, and they notified the Indian Coast Guard that a US-flagged yacht had vanished, but no authority would take up the case. And then detained in Dubai received an email from the lawyer in Florida that Latifa and Irve had been in touch with from on board Nostromo. It contained the video Latifa had recorded before she escaped.
David Haig was at a birthday party on a clifftop in Cornwall when he got the message. The phone service was bad and he left so that he could download the video. And then when I get like four bars or something, I stop and watch this video. Hello, my name is Latif Al Maktoum. My father is the Prime Minister of UAE and the ruler of Dubai. And if you are watching this video, either I'm dead or I'm in a very, very, very bad situation. And I was just like...
Oh my God. What do I talk about? Do I talk about all the murders? Do I talk about all the abuse I've seen? You know, it was basically evidence saying, my father and his men are very bad. They're after me. They've done these terrible things. Help.
They put me in prison and they tortured me. They told me that your father told us to beat you until we kill you. He's pure evil. There's nothing good in him. He's responsible for so many people. All of this public image that he's trying to portray, human rights, is bullshit. There is no justice here. They don't care. Especially if you're a female, your life is so disposable.
I knew that what was there was dynamite. He says he thought, this is a nuclear bomb. But it was a nuclear bomb that would get her freedom if she was still alive and would get justice if she wasn't. The group released the video to the media and they posted it on the internet. We put it on YouTube and it went around the world.
No one from Dubai's royal family said anything publicly in response to the video. But soon, Erve and Tina and the Filipino crew members were released. Tina flew to her family's home in Finland. Erve sailed Nostromo to Sri Lanka.
And then the two of them made their way to London. So hi everyone. And they gave a press conference with Detained in Dubai. My name is Tina. Latifa is my best friend. Tina was nervous, but she told her story in a steady voice. So the reason I'm here today is because I want our story to be heard in order to Latifa get a chance for freedom.
She told the reporters about her friendship with Latifa, about the capoeira lessons, about how at first Latifa had been so shy that her capoeira nickname was Chimida, how she'd come out of her shell when she started skydiving, how Tina had come to love her. Latifa is probably the kindest person I know. She always goes out of her way to help others and she doesn't want to take any credit of things that she does for others.
She also comes across as very embarrassed of her family's wealth. She's very generous, though, very down-to-earth. Tina told the story of the escape. She told how commandos had stormed Nostromo and how she'd been taken to Dubai and imprisoned and interrogated for hours at a time. I was threatened with a death penalty, and in a better scenario, I would be looking at a life in prison.
and basically they didn't believe anything I said. They didn't believe that I didn't help Latifa because she was my friend. They thought I was after some monetary gain and they also wanted to know which organization was behind this whole plan. And in order to be released I was forced to make a false confession and sign documents in Arabic and agree on a non-disclosure agreement.
Tina says after she was released, she got threatening phone calls. It sounded like the same guy who'd been interrogating her. And he basically reminded me that Sheikh Mohammed can get me anywhere. So I wasn't really safe anywhere. If I would talk, if I would give any details about what happened to the press.
So after my release, when I first time saw the video that was obviously published and it was made in my apartment, that's where we recorded it, I felt very, very emotional and I started to cry in front of my family. I realized then that I need to keep on fighting for her and I wish everyone would do their best to really help Latifa to be free.
I mean, what they're saying is pretty shocking. Does this end up getting a lot of media attention? Yeah, the story of the runaway princess and the French captain and the martial arts instructor ran in newspapers and on TV. They say she was snatched from this yacht by Emirati special forces off the coast of India as she tried to make an extraordinary escape from her father and the city-state he rules.
But Tina and Hervé's story was greeted with some scepticism. An Interpol Red Notice, issued in March at the UAE's request, partially confirms their story. But the warrant alleges that instead of escaping of her own free will, Princess Latifa was kidnapped.
The BBC cast some doubt on the credibility of Latifa's supporters. And it even aired a sort of conspiracy theory that detained in Dubai could be getting money from Qatar. That this whole thing could be part of a standoff between those two countries. Could Princess Latifa have become a pawn in big power politics? The government of Dubai told us that for legal reasons, they were unable to comment on the details of the allegations. But they said that those making them had a track record of criminal activity.
In spite of all this news coverage of Princess Latifa's capture, the UAE government still offered no response, no comment, no proof that Latifa was even alive. Detained in Dubai reported her abduction to the United Nations, and then they worked with the BBC's investigative programme, Panorama, to make a documentary about her escape. That programme came out in December, nine months after Latifa disappeared. The mystery of the missing princess.
The documentary's release date coincided with Latifa's 33rd birthday. It included interviews with multiple people who said the princess had escaped of her own free will and had been violently captured by armed men sent by her father. I feel really bad because I was supposed to bring her to safety and to freedom. And look what happened. I don't even know where she is. I have...
The gravest concern regarding Latifa, that she might not even be alive. No one's seen her, no one's heard from her. There's been no official response from the UAE at all. Not to us, not to the press, not to Amnesty International, not to Human Rights Watch, and significantly not to the United Nations, who have written to both the UAE and India. Nothing. Why would that be?
When the documentary was released, the Emirati government finally issued a public response. This was its first acknowledgement that the incident had even occurred. It said that Latifa had not tried to escape, but had been kidnapped by Hervé Jaubert, who had demanded a ransom of $300 million. The statement says, Her Highness Sheikha Latifa is now safe in Dubai. She and her family are looking forward to celebrating her birthday today, in privacy and peace.
But they issued no photos. There was no proof that Latifa was celebrating anything. None of her friends had heard any word from her. Representatives of the United Nations wrote to the UAE, demanding information about her whereabouts. And then, later that month, the UAE released three photos. And there was Latifa, sitting at a table with plates of food in front of her. And next to her was someone quite powerful. Mary Robinson.
Right. You wrote about this in your article. It's like a strange scene where Latifa is pictured with Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. Yes, and the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Along with the photos, the UAE issued a statement. It says, At the request of the family, on 15th of December 2018, Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former president of Ireland, met with Her Highness Sheikha Latifa in Dubai.
Photographs taken during the afternoon they spent together have been shared with their consent. During her visit to Dubai, Mary Robinson was reassured that Her Highness Sheikha Latifa is receiving the necessary care and support she requires. The statement was met with some scepticism. Mary Robinson joins us now. Good morning. Good morning. A few days later, Mary Robinson made an appearance on BBC Radio to promote her book about climate change.
But the interviewer, Michelle Hussain, changed the subject. I want to ask you about some pictures that were released just in the last few days of you in Dubai with Sheikha Latifa, one of the daughters of Dubai's ruler, who reportedly tried to escape abroad earlier this year and was forcibly returned. Why were you seen with her? How did that come about?
I was asked by Princess Haya, whom I've known for a long time. Mary Robinson said that she'd visited the family at the request of her friend, Princess Haya. Princess Haya was Sheikh Mohammed's sixth and youngest wife, Latifa's stepmother. She said that Haya had asked her for help with what she called a family dilemma. And the dilemma was that Latifa is vulnerable, she's troubled. She made a video that she now regrets making.
Haya had them both over to lunch so that Mary Robinson could meet Latifa. She's a very likeable young woman, but clearly troubled, clearly needs the medical care that she's receiving. You can hear Mary Robinson trying to steer the interview back to her book about climate and Michelle Hussein not having any of it.
We talked about climate, actually, because I had given a book copy of my climate book to Princess Haya. I just want to ask you about what she said in her video, which was seen around the world, was that she was in prison for three years and tortured repeatedly on her return.
Michelle Hussain questioned whether Mary Robinson can have made a realistic assessment of Latifa's welfare when the princess was surrounded by the very family she had accused of imprisoning her. I was able to assess the situation. She wasn't with her wider family. She was with Princess Haya and some of Princess Haya's younger family and, you know, two other people. It wasn't a big number. I was very aware of her.
Yes, I was very aware of how troubled she appeared to be. Mary Robinson said Latifa chatted with Haia's young children and they talked about skydiving. And the future. And we talked about climate change. And I mentioned that I would be back in Dubai in early March because my book is I'm promoting it at the Emirates Literary Festival. I also sent a report. Excuse me. I want to say this. I also sent a report.
that evening to Michelle Bachelet, the current High Commissioner for Human Rights. Michelle Bachelet was Mary Robinson's successor at the UN. And Mary Robinson says she assured the High Commissioner that Latifa was in the loving care of her family. I think you have to bear in mind that this is a troubled young woman who has a serious medical situation. She's receiving psychiatric care and they don't want her to endure any more publicity.
In later interviews, Robinson said that she'd been told that Latifa suffered from bipolar disorder and that she didn't know how to talk with somebody who had that condition. So she didn't ask Latifa about her escape or what her life was like now. She said, quote, I really didn't actually want to talk to her and increase the trauma over a nice lunch. The photographs of the lunch were published in newspapers around the world. In the pictures, Robinson is smiling, but Latifa isn't.
She looks dazed and pale, hunched over in a dark hoodie. She's not looking at the camera. Latifa's friends were relieved to see that she was alive, but she didn't look okay. And if she was okay, why hadn't they heard from her? The silence stretched on. Tina told me that she used to get a lot of messages on Facebook about Latifa. People would reach out to ask about her or to offer to help. There were hoaxes, people pretending to be Latifa. But one day, a year after Latifa's abduction...
Tina got a message that seemed different. Tina gave the person the right answers about the birthday present and Latifa's nicknames. And the sender wrote back, I'm sorry, I'm shaking now, Miss Tina. I'm scared to help Miss Latifa, but she's very kind to me.
And then the writer sent a photo of a letter from Latifa. That's next time on The Runaway Princesses. The Runaway Princesses was written and produced by Catherine Winter and Heidi Blake. It was edited by Samara Fremark, Willing Davidson, and me, Madeline Barron. Sound design by Chris Julin and Samara Fremark, with original music by Chris Julin. Our art is by Malika Favre. Additional editing and production by Natalie Jablonski.
Fact-checking by Elen Warner and Teresa Matthew. Art direction by Aviva Mikhailov. Legal review by Fabio Bertoni and Kamisha Laurie. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of global audio for Conde Nast is Chris Bannon. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. From PR.
