Princess Haya, a wife of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, has fled to London amid fears for her life after learning chilling details about the disappearance of one of her husband’s 23 daughters, according to reports.
The British-educated Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein, 45, daughter of King Hussein of Jordan, married the sheikh in 2004, becoming his sixth and “junior wife.”
She initially fled this year to Germany to seek asylum and is now said to be living in a $107 million townhouse in Kensington Palace Gardens as she prepares for a legal battle in the High Court’s Family Division, the BBC reported.
Princess Haya also brought her son Zayed, 7, and daughter Al Jalila, 11, to London with her, according to the Daily Beast.
The billionaire Sheikh Mohammed, 69, vice president of the United Arab Emirates, has posted a cryptic poem on Instagram accusing an unidentified woman of “treachery and betrayal.”
“We have an ailment that no medicine can cure, No experts in herbs can remedy this,” reads a line in “Affection in Your Eyes,” Business Insider reported.
Sources close to the princess have said she had recently discovered disturbing facts behind the mysterious return to Dubai last year of Sheikha Latifa, one of the ruler’s 23 children by different wives.
The 32-year-old Latifa fled the UAE by sea in February 2018 with the help of a Frenchman, but was intercepted by armed Emirati commandos off the Indian coast and returned to Dubai, according to Business Insider.
Before her daring escape attempt, Latifa made a video detailing alleged abuse at the hands of her father — instructing her lawyer to release the tape if her attempt failed.
Latifa has not been heard from since and activists fear she has been languishing in jail, though the Emirati embassy in London in December said in a statement that she was alive, and “safe in Dubai.”
In 2000, another of the sheik ‘s daughters, Sheikha Shamsa, fled the family’s English country estate in a Range Rover at age 18. She was caught and sent to Dubai.
“Princess Haya has every reason to fear the consequences if she were to be sent back to Dubai. She surely knows, as Latifa knew, that asylum provides her the only safe route out of the royal palace,” said Radha Stirling, head of Detained in Dubai, a group campaigning for Latifa’s cause.
“If she was abused, she could not go to the police; if she wanted a divorce, she could not go to the courts,” she added in her statement, according to Business Insider.
A spokesman for the UAE told the news outlet: “The UAE government does not intend to comment on allegations about individuals’ private lives.”