London, United Kingdom:
Campaigners Human Rights Watch have known as for proof of life of the daughter of Dubai’s ruler and international stress to cost-free her right after footage emerged apparently displaying the royal in distress.
Sheikha Latifa, 35, has not been noticed in public because she attempted to escape the emirate by sea in 2018, and stated in a video aired by the BBC that she fears for her life.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson later told British media he was “concerned” by the videos, when rights group Amnesty International known as the footage “chilling”.
“We are hopeful to see that there is movement and that there are comments being made,” HRW Gulf researcher Hiba Zayadin told AFP late Wednesday.
“We just hope that they are followed by actions, that the UN fully and clearly calls for her release, not just proof of life.
“(Also) that she is permitted to travel abroad exactly where she can speak freely and exactly where she can say and speak of what she has been going by way of.”
The UAE foreign ministry and Dubai Media Office have yet to comment on the case.
Latifa’s father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, is vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a constituent.
“Pleas for assist”
“We are really concerned for her security, as good friends say all speak to with her stopped in current months,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“Sheikha Latifa may possibly be detained in a ‘golden cage’, but that does not transform the truth that her deprivation of liberty is arbitrary,” she added in a statement Thursday.
“Given its prolonged nature would quantity to torture, Amnesty International calls on the international neighborhood to turn its consideration to Sheikha Latifa’s pleas for assist.”
The BBC said the clips were filmed roughly a year after she was captured and returned to Dubai, showing her crouched in a corner of what she says is a bathroom.
“I’m a hostage and this villa has been converted into a jail,” she says in one cellphone video.
“There’s 5 policemen outdoors and two policewomen inside the residence. Every day I am worried about my security and my life.”
In another video, Latifa says her situation is “finding more desperate each day”.
“I never want to be a hostage in this jail villa. I just want to be cost-free,” she says.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights will “surely raise these new developments with the UAE”, a spokesman told the BBC.
(This story has not been edited by TheSpuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)