Emirati Princess Meets UN Rights Chief in Paris, Says She Is ‘Well’
Princess Latifa, the 36-year-old daughter of the ruler of Dubai, met the United Nations rights chief Michelle Bachelet in Paris, a year after she said in a video smuggled to British media that she was being held hostage by her father. The exact date of the meeting is not known, though the Washington Post reported that the meeting took place at end of November 2021 in Paris, when Bachelet was en route to Burkina Faso and Niger for official visits. The meeting reportedly was held at the request of the princess, and organized by her legal advisor. It is not clear why the meeting is first being revealed now, several months later.
“Latifa conveyed to the High Commissioner that she was well & expressed her wish for respect for her privacy,” Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, tweeted. Accompanying the tweet was a photo of the two women taken in Paris.
Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum is the daughter of UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Sky News released a statement from the princess which said: “Sheikha Latifa would like to state that she had a lengthy, positive and private meeting in Paris with the High Commissioner to assert her right to a private life, following persistent media speculation about her. Latifa would like to make clear that she is living as she wishes, that she is traveling as she wishes, that she is perfectly well and that she would like the media to allow her to live in peace.”
The BBC released a secret video recording in February 2021 in which Princess Latifa said she is being held hostage in a “villa converted into a jail, The report also said that Latifa was guarded by a rotation of some 30 police officers both inside and outside of a villa in a compound owned by her father and that the villa’s windows are barred and she had not been outside in over a year. She had last been seen publicly in March 2018 before trying to flee the country on a yacht set to sail across the Indian Ocean.
