“UAE authorities should immediately reveal the whereabouts of Sheikha Latifa, confirm her status, and allow her contact with the outside world,” said
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “If she is detained she needs to be given the rights all detainees should have, including being taken before an independent judge.”
Tiina Jauhiainen, a Finnish citizen and former Dubai resident for 17 years, told Human Rights Watch that she met Sheikha Latifa in 2010 and developed a long-term friendship with her. Another woman, a United States citizen, told Human Rights Watch that she also became friends with Sheikha Latifa after she began giving Sheikha Latifa skydiving lessons in Dubai around 2014. These
accounts are in line with media reports from 2017, including a January 24 story on Sheikha Latifa by
Emirates Woman, which contains photos of Sheikha Latifa skydiving and describes her as “the daredevil royal who’s inspiring us to be more adventurous.”
Jauhiainen showed Human Rights Watch copies of Sheikha Latifa’s identification cards and educational certificates, which Jauhiainen took out of the country in late 2017 prior to the escape attempt.
Jauhiainen and the skydiving instructor, in individual interviews, confirmed that the person appearing in a recent YouTube video is Sheikha Latifa. In the
40-minute video, Sheikha Latifa says that her older sister, Shamsa, also fled her father while in the UK in 2000 but that UAE authorities later kidnapped Shamsa from the UK and forcibly returned her to the UAE.
Media reports from the time support this narrative.
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