Why Are Women Escaping Dubai?

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Why Are Women Escaping Dubai? episodes

February 16, 2024 Dubai’s Runaway Princesses
Dubai may have a reputation as an ultramodern place with an indoor ski hill, the tallest building in the world, and beautiful beaches, but for years the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, has been accused of abusing women — including his own daughters. Host Carol Hills speaks with investigative journalist Heidi Blake who produced “The Runaway Princesses,” a four-part narrative audio series for The New Yorker, which tells the story of Princess Latifa, who spent decades trying to escape one of the world’s most-powerful men .
13 min
February 13, 2024 The Sheika Kept Prisoner (with Heidi Blake)
In 2018, Sheika Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, the daughter of the ruler of Dubai, attempted a daring escape to international waters, away from what she characterized as a dangerous and oppressive life among her family. She was captured and brought back to the United Arab Emirates, and though there have been public statements saying she is safe and content, her wellbeing has become a matter of international concern. Dana is joined by New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake.
35 min
February 07, 2024 Dark Dubai: Sheiks, Escapes and Runaway Princesses
When the Sheik of Dubai’s daughters tried to escape their father, world powers turned a blind eye. But investigative reporter Heidi Blake was determined to document their plight. Writing for the New Yorker last year, Heidi unraveled the disturbing story of Emirati princesses Latifa and Shamsa, and how Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum crushed their bid for freedom. This week on Whale Hunting, Bradley Hope speaks with Heidi about reporting this story — now available as a new podcast, The Runaway Princesses — and how it reveals cracks in both British justice and in Dubai’s system of absolute monarchy.
To listen to Heidi’s new podcast, search for The Runaway Princesses in your favorite podcast app.
36 min
February 06, 2024 The Dubai princesses who risked it all to run away
Sheikha Latifa was born into incredible privilege as the daughter of the leader of Dubai, but she and her sister risked everything to escape years of alleged abuse at the hands of their father. Heidi Blake explores the story in her new podcast The Runaway Princesses.
23 min
January 23, 2024 “The Runaway Princesses,” Episode 4: Hostage
With Madeleine Baran and Heidi Blake, Illustrations by Malika Favre
January 23, 2024
Latifa was captured and returned to Dubai. Secret recordings shed light on her desperate fate.
After Latifa was captured, her supporters heard nothing until one day, more than a year later, her friend Tiina received a message—a handwritten letter from Latifa, smuggled out of the villa where she was being held prisoner. Latifa’s supporters managed to equip her with a secret phone, which she used to make recordings that documented her ordeal. Her family had released carefully staged photos of her, saying that she was “vulnerable” and was being cared for at home. The world was told that Latifa was mentally ill, and that she’d been kidnapped by criminals and rescued by her father. Sheikh Mohammad called her return a “rescue mission.” But in her illicit recordings, Latifa insisted that her father was in fact the one holding her hostage. She said that she was all alone and under constant guard. But she swore that she would never let him destroy her dream of freedom.
46 min
January 23, 2024 “The Runaway Princesses,” Episode 3: A Nice Lunch
With Madeleine Baran and Heidi Blake, Illustrations by Malika Favre
January 23, 2024
Aboard a yacht in the Arabian Sea, Latifa was briefly free. Then commandos stormed the boat.
When Latifa and her friend Tiina reached the yacht Nostromo, for a couple of days it seemed as if their escape might be successful. But back in Dubai Latifa’s friends were questioned about her disappearance, and she and her co-conspirators feared that Nostromo was being followed. Latifa contacted supporters in Britain, letting them know that she’d escaped—she thought that publicizing her case might blunt the response of her father, Sheikh Mohammed. But the sheikh had powerful allies and forces at his command. He and the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, made a deal; armed commandos stormed the yacht and carried Latifa off. Her supporters were left with no idea where she was—or even whether she was still alive. They released the video she’d recorded, and the story of the missing princess made headlines around the world.
33 min
January 23, 2024 “The Runaway Princesses,” Episode 2: Escape
With Madeleine Baran and Heidi Blake, Illustrations by Malika Favre
January 23, 2024
After Princess Shamsa was caught trying to flee her father, Princess Latifa decided to make her own attempt.
Shamsa’s effort to claim asylum in Britain was thwarted, and she was taken back to Dubai, where she was drugged and imprisoned. Latifa was just a teen-ager, but she was desperate to help Shamsa, who had been a mother figure to her. Latifa decided that her only option was to escape to another country and bring attention to the sisters’ plight. But she’d never been outside alone, and she had no idea how to cross the border into Oman. She was caught and brutally punished. For years afterward, she pretended that her spirit was broken. (Sheikh Mohammed has denied mistreating his daughters.)
But, all the while, she was planning a second escape, and this time she tried to think through every detail. She found conspirators to help her buy equipment, and arranged for a dinghy and Jet Skis that would take her to a yacht waiting in international waters. And she made a video to be released by her friends if something went wrong. She hoped that, if the world knew her story, it would be harder for her father to make her disappear, like her sister—or to kill her.
44 min
January 23, 2024 “The Runaway Princesses,” Episode 1: Sisters
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.
39 min
June 28, 2023 Longform Podcast #540: Heidi Blake
Heidi Blake is a writer for The New Yorker and the author of two books, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West and The Ugly Game: The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup, with Jonathan Calvert. Her latest article is “The Fugitive Princesses of Dubai.”
“I definitely feel as an investigative reporter that I feel very driven by my own capacity for shock and outrage and genuinely feeling like this is unbelievable. And that kind of makes me want to keep digging. And once I stop feeling that on any given topic, I lose interest. And so I’ve always been a generalist, and I just kind of rove from one topic to the next. I’m always finding myself in new territory where I know absolutely nothing about the thing I’m starting to dig into and have to try and play catch up and get my head around something new.”
Heidi Blake
47 min
May 03, 2023 The Fugitive Princess Forced to Return to Dubai
In 2018, Sheikha Latifa of Dubai made a daring attempt to escape her home country. Her plan was to hide in the trunk of a car, launch a dinghy, reach a yacht, sail to India or Sri Lanka, and then fly to the United States to claim asylum. But, in the middle of the Arabian Sea, a team of armed men stormed the boat and forced Latifa back to Dubai.
The commandos had been sent at the request of her father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai. The Sheikh has been praised by world leaders as a modernizer and a champion for women’s advancement in the Middle East, all while subjecting Latifa and other women in his family to confinement and abuse (charges that he has denied).
Heidi Blake, a staff writer at The New Yorker, spent many months reporting on what led the princess to flee, and on the consequences that she faced. She joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the Dubai royal family’s patriarchal system of control and the women who tried to break free.
May 3, 2023
40 min