With Madeleine Baran and Heidi Blake, Illustrations by Malika Favre

January 23, 2024

Why the daughters of the ruler of Dubai decided to escape his control.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, has been celebrated for modernizing the United Arab Emirates—espousing gender equality and promising to “remove all the hurdles that women face.” But the New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake found that some women in the sheikh’s own family endured shocking mistreatment, and that foreign governments failed again and again to help them. Sheikh Mohammed is one of the world’s largest private landowners, with a large estate in Britain, where he brings members of his family to spend the summer. Blake talked to some of the sheikh’s former employees to learn what was happening inside the manor. Chauffeurs employed by the sheikh disclosed that they often drove young women from London to his property, and that the women would sometimes leave bruised and weeping. When a detective looked into one woman’s allegation of rape, he said that he was told to drop it—it would be handled “government to government.”

Then, one of Sheikh Mohammed’s daughters, Princess Shamsa, decided to flee the estate and claim asylum. She begged British authorities not to look away this time.