The images were shot in the toilet.
The only room she can lock, explains Latifa al-Maktoum.
In this video published by the BBC, Tuesday, February 16, the daughter of the Emir of Dubai ensures that she is monitored 24 hours a day in a villa with closed windows "without medical assistance, without trial, without anything".
"I worry every day for my safety and my life [...] the police told me that I will be in prison all my life and that I will never see the sun again", continues the young woman of 35 years. .
"The situation is getting more desperate every day."
Since the publication of this video, radio silence.
No official reaction, nor any mention in the local press.
"This is what shivers down your spine. We have no news since the publication of this video which could have been shot in 2019 and that his friends would have managed to transmit", explains to France 24 Sima Watling of Amnesty International.
Questioned by TV5 Monde, the princess's lawyer, Rodney Dixon, calls on the UN and the British government to mobilize to demand his release.
"The UK government should ensure that steps are taken to put pressure on the UAE."
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on Tuesday described the images as "very disturbing".
Prime Minister Boris Johnson also said he was "very worried".
"Golden prison"
This is the first time that the princess has given a sign of life for three years, since the video published in March 2018 in which Latifa al-Maktoum told of her plan to escape from her "golden prison" and claimed to be kidnapped by her father.
"If I don't survive, at least there will be this video," explained the young woman.
On February 24, 2018, Latifa al-Maktoum and a friend managed to leave the United Arab Emirates for the Sultanate of Oman.
The princess had been preparing this operation for seven years.
In 2011, Sheikha Latifa contacted a former counter-espionage officer, the Franco-American Hervé Jaubert, after reading how he managed to flee Dubai by swimming after conflict with the authorities of the kingdom.
The two women had managed to join Hervé Jaubert on his yacht, but on March 4, the sailboat was boarded by the Indian Navy in international waters.
The princess was then brought back to Dubai and the crew imprisoned for a few days.
Contacted by France 24, Hervé Jaubert ensures that "legal actions have been taken against the governments and the people responsible for this criminal attack", but the entrepreneur based in the United States refuses to give more details, claiming to prepare a production with Netflix that will tell "the whole story".
An emir with a disturbing personality
This incredible escape attempt was Sheikha Latifa's second.
At 16, she had already tried to flee before being arrested at the border.
In 2000, her older sister, Shamsa, also tried to take to the seas during a stay in the United Kingdom.
According to Latifa's account, her sister was "drugged", brought back to Dubai and "locked up" on her father's orders.
This version of the facts was confirmed by the British justice in March 2020. A London magistrate had been brought to pronounce at the turn of a legal battle between the emir of Dubai, Mohammed ben Rached al-Maktoum, to his sixth wife, Princess Haya of Jordan.
Jordan's half-sister Abdullah II had created a sensation a few months earlier when she fled to London with her two children.
The court then estimated that Mohammed ben Rached al-Maktoum had ordered the kidnapping and kidnapping of Princesses Shamsa and Latifa, 18 years apart.
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According to British justice, he was also guilty of an incessant campaign of intimidation against his last wife.
This episode had considerably tarnished the image of the kingdom by painting the portrait of a cruel and authoritarian emir.
An emblematic case
With the publication of this new video, the issue of women's rights in the United Arab Emirates is back in the spotlight.
Because behind the glamorous varnish of Dubai, paradise for influencers from around the world, hides a much darker reality, explains to France 24 Radha Stirling, founder of the NGO Detained in Dubai, which claims to have helped 15,000 people in the Emirates and in Saudi Arabia since its inception in 2008.
"We help people who are subjected to arbitrary arrests, torture, people arrested for messages on social networks or for debt," explains Radha Stirling from London.
According to her information, the princess is still being held in the villa where the video was shot and her bank accounts have been blocked.
Since the media coverage of Princess Latifa's case, Radha Sterling claims to have seen the number of requests to flee the Emirates explode.
"We have more and more women from the Emirates calling us for help or advice. Latifa has been an inspiration to them. Because she shows that this kind of situation is not unusual and even concerns princesses."
According to Amnesty International, this case fits more broadly in the long list of human rights violations perpetrated in the kingdom in recent years, reflecting a development towards an increasingly repressive regime.
"Even if the Emirates want to appear very modern in the eyes of the world, the authorities have a heavy hand towards their fellow citizens and freedom of expression is severely punished", explains Sima Watling, who recalls the case of dissident Ahmed Mansoor, placed at the 'isolation since 2017 after a mock trial for "undermining the status and prestige of the United Arab Emirates and their symbols, including their leaders" or "publication of false information".
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to soon question the Emirates about the illegal detention of Princess al-Maktoum.
For the moment, the kingdom's authorities have not commented.
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