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My first piece for @NewYorker, on the royal women of Dubai who risked everything to flee the brutality of its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, while he publicly espoused gender equality. A story of mind-blowing courage and terrifying cruelty. newyorker.com/magazine/2023/…
@NewYorker Sheikha Shamsa was the first to flee, escaping from her father's estate in Surrey in her late teens. She was caught, hustled back to Dubai, and imprisoned for years under heavy sedation.
@NewYorker When Shamsa's younger sister, Sheikha Latifa, ran away to try to get help, she too was caught, imprisoned, and tortured. "I was treated worse than any animal," she wrote to friends.
Around the same time, another Emirati royal, Sheikha Bouchra, was kidnapped from the UK and returned to Dubai against her will, where royal sources say she was locked up, drugged, and eventually killed.
Meanwhile, drivers who worked for Sheikh Mohammed for years say they were routinely sent out to collect groups of sex workers and bring them to his UK residences. Some became so distressed by what happened inside that they cried all the way home.
Sheikh Mohammed's lawyers denied that he abducted, tortured and imprisoned his daughters, exploited sex workers, or had any involvement in Bouchra's death. But in a video recorded before her 2nd escape, Latifa called him a "major criminal" who terrorised the women in his family.
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