A shocking video of Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum, one of the daughters of ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, surfaced claiming that she was being held against her will in a barricaded villa.

Princess Latifa who tried to flee the country in 2018 only to be detained by commandos in a boat off India has re-emerged with this new video. 

Princess Latifa

Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum drew international attention in 2018 when a human rights group released a video made by her in which she described an attempt to escape Dubai.

The BBC said Sheikha Latifa recorded the videos in a bathroom at the villa over months on a phone she secretly received about a year after her capture.

"I am a hostage and this villa has been converted into a jail": Princess Latifa 

"I am a hostage and this villa has been converted into a jail," Latifa, 35, said in the video published by the BBC as part of a Panorama programme. "All the windows are barred shut, I can't open any window." She said she was making the video in the bathroom of the villa, the only room she could lock herself into.

Latifa said in the video that there were police officers stationed outside and inside the villa. "I just want to be free. I don't know when I'll be released and what the conditions will be like when I'm released. Every day I am worried about my safety and my life."

Princess Latifa

 Free Latifa campaign

As per Reuters reports, the Free Latifa campaign, which has lobbied for her release, said it had managed to smuggle a phone to Latifa.

David Haigh, one of the campaign's co-founders and her lawyer, called for Latifa's immediate release and an end to "a horrendous period of parental and human rights abuse that has significantly damaged the reputation of the UAE," stated Reuters. 

(Inputs from wires) 

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