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Dubai Princess Latifa says she is being held hostage in video recordings
By Daniel Uria
Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai's ruler, said she is being held hostage in a villa converted into a prison following a 2018 escape attempt. Photo courtesy Tiina Jauhiainen/Wikimedia Commons
Feb. 16 (UPI) -- The daughter of Dubai's ruler accused her father of holding her hostage in video messages released on Tuesday.
In the video footage shared with BBC Panorama and supplied to CNN, Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum -- daughter of United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum -- said she has been imprisoned after attempting to flee the country.
"I'm a hostage. This villa has been converted into jail. All the windows are barred shut, I can't open any window ... I've been by myself, solitary confinement. No access to medical help, no trial, no charge, nothing," she said.
Latifa's friend, Tiina Jauhiainen, told the BBC that she helped sneak Latifa the phone that the videos were recorded on but the messages have recently stopped and she is deeply concerned for her friend.
"She is so pale, she hasn't seen sunlight for months. She can basically move just from her room to the kitchen and back," she said.
Latifa, 35, traveled to international waters to board a boat owned by French businessman Harve Jaubert in Feb. 2018, before the boat was boarded by commandos off the coast of India and she was returned to Dubai.
The videos were recorded over a series of several months about a year after she was returned to Dubai, the BBC said.
In the videos, Latifa said she fought back against the soldiers who attempted to take her off of the boat and was ultimately tranquilized and placed onto a private jet where she did not awaken until landing in Dubai.
After the 2018 escape attempt, former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson visited Latifa, saying later that she was "troubled" and "regretted" her attempts to escape.
Robinson told BBC Panorama that she was misled by Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, the sixth wife of the sheikh who is not Latifa's mother, about her condition.
"Haya began to explain that Latifa had quite a serious bipolar problem. And they were saying to me, in a way that was very convincing: 'we don't want Latifa to go through any further trauma' ... I didn't know how to address somebody who was bipolar about their trauma. And I didn't really actually want to talk to her and increase the trauma over a nice lunch," she said.
Haya fled to London with her two children in 2019 and applied for a forced marriage protection order, fearing that they may be kidnapped as well.
Notorious Arab crime family targeted in early morning raid by 100s of German police in Berlin & Brandenburg
18 Feb, 2021 10:29
(FILE PHOTO) © REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
German police and special forces have raided more than 25 properties in Berlin and Brandenburg in an early morning offensive against the country’s most notorious crime group. Two people were arrested.
Thursday morning’s operation was primarily aimed at members of the large Arab crime family, Remmo, who are being investigated as part of a crackdown on organized crime.
The Berlin public prosecutor’s office is investigating them for violating laws on the distribution of firearms, large-scale drug trafficking and violent crime. The federal tax authorities are also involved in the investigation concerning allegations of tax fraud against members of the family.
Police said two men had been arrested during the raids and another suspect escaped. The raid also targeted Chechen clans in the region who were involved in brutal clashes with the Remmo family in November 2020. Authorities feared a gang war could break out after the Chechens attacked members of the Remmo family and they then retaliated.
The two groups reportedly agreed to a truce after Syrian-Lebanese professional boxer Manuel Charr mediated negotiations between them.
According to Der Spiegel, German authorities had been analyzing data from EncroChat for nearly a year, a discontinued app dubbed "WhatsApp for gangsters," by criminologists.
French security authorities managed to infiltrate an EncroChat server in spring 2020 and secretly read the chat traffic of tens of thousands of participants for months.
Armed gunmen abduct dozens of students, teachers from Nigeria school
By Sommer Brokaw
A sign for the Government Science College is pictured Thursday in Kagara, Niger State, Nigeria, one day after a group of gunmen abducted students and teachers from the boarding school. At least one student was killed. Photo by EPA-EFE
Feb. 18 (UPI) -- An assault on a boarding school in Nigeria that killed one person and led to more than 40 kidnappings has again raised suspicions about Boko Haram and drawn a strong rebuke from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The attack occurred on Wednesday at the school in Kagara in north-central Nigeria, officials said.
Authorities said one student was killed and a total of 42 staffers and students were kidnapped.
The state governor said more than 600 students were enrolled at the school.
No group has yet claimed responsibility, but the attack is similar to others in the past carried out by the Boko Haram terror group.
The group abducted almost 300 schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014, many of whom are still missing. Parents of some of those missing girls said last month that they had escaped from the group.
More than 300 schoolboys were abducted in Kanakar in December and later rescued. That abduction was blamed on local bandits.
The Kagara kidnappers demanded a ransom, which the government has refused to pay, saying the attackers would only use the money to buy more weapons and cause more harm.
Thursday, Guterres' office called the attacks on schools in Nigeria "abhorrent and unacceptable."
"The secretary-general urges the Nigerian authorities to spare no efforts in rescuing those abducted and holding to account those responsible for this act," a spokesperson said.
Yeah, right! 7 years and there has been very little effort by the government to rescue the girls. They rescued the 300 boys, but very few girls.
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