Campsite media.
Welcome to Dubai.
It's a dazzling metropolis in the United Arab Emirates, flanked by rolling sand dunes and the turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf.
This is one of the world's great cities.
Giant islands are shaped of palms that could be seen from space.
The world's tallest skyscraper, a modern day tower of Babel.
The only seven star hotel in the world.
Dubai is a playground for expats and the mega-rich.
How many handbags do you have?
I don't know.
Where else in the world can you live like this?
It's magic.
Who is responsible for this world of earthly delights?
Well, there's one man who takes credit.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktou.
Welcome to the world.
Sheikh Mo, as he's called, is the all-powerful ruler of Dubai.
He's 73 years old, but his beard is jet black, which might mean it's dyed, and overall the look is very stern Arab dad.
Sheikh Mohammed, whatever the Sheikh wants, gets done and fast.
Sheikh Mo is a monarch, but he's sort of like a cool monarch.
He drives around in a white Mercedes G-Class SUV.
The license plate, number one.
Although extremely wealthy, they manage to remain humble in the eyes of their subjects
and are devoted to public issues in both Dubai and the UAE.
He projects the image of a progressive, democratic ruler, or at least progressive for the Gulf region.
He's a poet, an author, a horse lover.
Some horses just give you that feeling, you know?
So in telling you that there is something about them.
Though there are, you can see their heart and the horses is fantastic.
Sounds pretty great, huh?
Sheikh Mo seems like the perfect leader for his country.
A man whose vision helped turn Dubai from a spec on the map to a world-renowned destination.
A man who represents wealth, prestige, and progress.
And of all the things that are big about Dubai, the skyscrapers, the overseas horse races, the money, there's one more thing.
Sheikh Mo's family.
At certain points, he's had multiple wives at once, which is permitted under the country's Sharia law and a lot of children.
He's thought to have up to 30 kids.
Sheikh Mo's is so generous.
They've always been brought up to see giving around them.
This was the general assessment.
But there was one child who didn't agree.
All my father cares about his reputation.
He will kill people. They don't care.
Especially if you're a female.
Your life is so disposable. They don't care.
He's the most evil person I've ever met in my life. He's pure evil.
From campsite media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Infamous, and I'm Vanessa Quigoryatas.
This is episode one of our four-part series, The Missing Princesses.
This week, we're telling yet another dramatic story about the rich and famous.
But this one is from Halfway Across the World.
It's a story I've done a lot of reporting on, but I'm also going to be joined as a co-host by Natalie Robemad.
She's a writer on our team, and she has a personal link to the country.
So, Natalie, tell us about that.
Yeah, I actually grew up in the UAE, and I lived there until I was 18, first in Abu Dhabi and then into Dubai.
So, what was that like?
Well, it was interesting.
The UAE is this tiny sliver of a nation. Slightly smaller than Maine.
It's right next to Saudi Arabia, and it was officially formed in 1971 from a bunch of these kind of tiny city-states
that were ruled by different royal families who are the shakes, right?
Exactly, exactly.
So, the male members of those ruling families are called shakes, and the female members are called shekas.
You'd be surprised to think about it now, but back in the 90s, when I tell people where I was from, they'd be like,
Dubai, where is that?
I mean, are you trying to say that Americans don't care about the rest of the world?
Not no.
But, yeah, there was a time when not a lot of people had heard of Dubai.
I mean, the UAE is only 51 years old as a country.
Before then, and before oil money changed everything, it was known as the Trucial States.
So, that's like, when people say, oh, these people, they were just living in tents.
Like, is that the truth or what was it like back then?
Well, it's definitely a little orientalist way of describing it.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I mean, it was nowhere near as developed as it was now.
They were nomadic people. I mean, the main industry was prodiving and trading.
So, there's a grain of truth in there.
But when you were growing up, it was obviously more sophisticated than that.
Yeah, I mean, when I was growing up there in the 90s, Dubai was definitely still relatively small, but it was really, really rapidly developing as a tourism destination.
It kind of marketed itself to all these foreigners as a safe haven with permanent sunshine, even in the dead of winter.
So, people flooded over.
And then suddenly, it becomes this like champagne brunch Louis Vuitton toting hellscape.
Like, right?
Yeah, I mean, there was a point in the 2000s when I started to see tour buses on the way to school, and I was like, oh, this is really changed.
And that is the world that you can now see on the Real Housewives of Dubai.
There's a lot of gold here, and we have a lot of gold digas too.
The thing that's so weird about Dubai is there was always this other side to it, a terrifying side.
You could be arrested for being gay or for being a man allegedly wearing women's clothes.
There was no freedom of speech.
You try to buy an issue of vogue, and there'd be big, black, sharpie marks over nipples or other body parts, which were considered too risque.
Back then, even the internet was censored by the government.
If you tried to log into a website that government didn't like, it would be blocked, and an error message would pop up.
And what would it say?
Oh man, it would basically say that the site is blocked because it's inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political, and moral values of the United Arab Emirates.
But their values are consistent with real housewives' values?
I mean, what are these people doing living in Dubai then?
Money, that's a big part of it.
People put up with it because it's basically a tax haven.
You don't really have to pay any income tax to live there.
So you can make lots of money in this kind of a set of golden handcuffs.
And that's what our story is about.
It's about what happened to three princesses when they tried a breakout of those golden handcuffs.
Natalie will kick it off after the break.
We all have questions that keep us up at night.
The self-help industry tells us they have answers.
As a journalist and a skeptic, I'm not so sure.
So I've set out to talk to people who have gone to radical links to find answers.
I'm Katherine Roland.
From something else in Sony Music Entertainment, this is Seeking.
On season one, we're diving deep into the portal of plant medicine and psychedelics.
Coming April 3, listen to Seeking, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Jake Catlstein, author of Tokyo Vise.
I've been covering Japan's criminal underworld for 30 years, and I've seen more people disappear than I'd care to.
Including my old accountant, who as it turns out, was getting up to a lot more than taxes.
My co-hosts Shoko Plambak and I are tracking him down, and along the way, we're exploring what's really happening with Japan's missing people.
We call them Joe Hatsushan, or The Evaprated.
From campsite media and Sony Music Entertainment, The Evaprated, Season 1, Gone with the Gods, is available now.
Subscribe on Apple Podcast to binge all episodes or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
You're listening to Infamous from campsite media.
Before we get into the epic tale of what happened with Shekha Latifah and her father, I want to note that there was one thing she was known for, and it definitely wasn't handcuffs.
It was an act of total freedom, at least metaphorically speaking.
She was jumping out of airplanes.
Picture it. Over and over, many, many times.
Latifah is in a black skydiving suit, free falling from hundreds of feet above the aqua blue Persian Gulf.
She has the best view of Dubai. The city, the sea, the desert.
She's wearing pink and orange sunglasses that match her Nike sneakers.
In a photo, you can see her stretching out one leg in front of her, as though she's running on a cloud.
Hello, my name is Latifah on MacTomb. I was born in December 5, 1985.
My father is the Prime Minister of UAE. He has three daughters called Latifah. I'm the middle one.
That's Latifah. In a video, she recorded herself.
She's got long black hair and dark almond shaped eyes that widen as she talks.
When we think of wealthy golf royals, we think of monthly stipends and designer handbags.
Maybe they have a flat in London and are made. Maybe a cushy job as a VP of a bank.
Even if that job is really just a way of transferring money into their own bank accounts.
But Latifah was a bit different.
She was constantly on the move. If she wasn't jumping out of planes, she was riding horses, playing with her pet monkey, or mastering martial arts.
Which is how she met her friend, Tina Yaohiayinen.
She basically contacted me for private cupboard lessons. We started with lessons and eventually we became very good friends.
Tina's from Finland. She moved to Dubai more than 20 years ago, which in the very transient city with lots of expats and real housewives makes her an old timer.
Tina started seeing Latifah almost every day. Latifah wasn't allowed to work, so new hobbies like Capraera and then skydiving became obsessions.
Our friendship grew over the years.
Turns out the image of a fearless, free, daredevil princess wasn't the whole story.
You could easily get a wrong impression. Her life was actually very, very restricted. She was not allowed to study. She had not left the country since year 2000.
Now, some Emirati women live very free lives. They study abroad, work in government, don't wear hijab's.
But a lot of these personal freedoms are decided by families and aren't codified in law.
Up until recently, it was legal for a man to have sex with a girl as long as she was 14.
But for women, if you had kids out of wedlock, you could face a minimum of two years in jail.
And if you get divorced, you can lose custody of your children to the father once daughters reach 13 and sons 11.
This means that some women are basically second-class citizens to their husbands and fathers.
For example, Emirati women need their male guardians approval to marry, meaning their dad or if the dad is passed away, a brother or a cousin.
And get this, only Emirati men pass down citizenship.
So if an Emirati woman has a child with a non-Emerati man, her kid won't automatically be a UAE citizen.
To return to Latifa, well, she says that her life as a royal was even stricter than life for regular Emirati women.
I wasn't allowed to go outside. Like, I was going to school. I was sometimes going to the family's tables, to horse ride.
And apart from that, I didn't do anything else. I've been asking a lot just to go travelling to study, to do anything normal.
They don't let me. Freedom of choice is not something that, you know, we have.
So when you have it, you take it for granted. And if you don't have it, it's very, very special.
This was all disturbing to Tina, obviously. But there was something else Latifa said that was a real turning point for her.
Now she would understand what Latifa's life was really like.
More after the break.
The legend of Dr. Ronald Dante spans decades, movie stars, fugitive yachts, continents, if you believe his version of events.
He is Ronald Pella, a legendary combat.
No one but Ron could pull that off.
From campside media and Sony Music Entertainment, Chameleon Season 5, Dr. Dante is available now.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes or listen weekly, wherever you get your podcasts.
It's giving fashion!
Y'all need to tune in every week to listen to me, your girl Shae Kool-A and my bestie Tiger Lily dissect all things fashion.
What's popping off right now?
It wouldn't need to be left behind, boo.
From something else and Sony Music Entertainment, this is It's Giving Fashion.
Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Infamous from campside media.
So Tina had already been friends with Latifa for several years before Latifa finally told her about her sister.
I think it was in 2016 that she confided me and she told me about her sister Shamsa.
Tina was riveted by Latifa's story about her older sister Shamsa, who has been described as cheeky, full of life,
with dark hair and full lips like her younger sister.
Her name meant sun in Arabic.
But in terms of the pecking order in Shae Kool-A family, she and Latifa were not a planet that others orbited around.
Latifa said the story started nearly two decades earlier when Shamsa had big plans for her life.
She wanted to go to college.
In a letter she purportedly wrote to her cousin, she said that Shae Kool wouldn't let her.
By the way, we reached out to Shae Kool-A-Hum it's attorney with a detailed list of questions about everything you're hearing in this episode.
We did not hear back.
Anyway, Shamsa decided to gamble for freedom.
She had escaped from the family mansion in Surrey, in the UK while on holiday.
Tina learned that Shamsa had supposedly just left the house, disappeared after points far from Surrey.
Latifa, meanwhile, says she was back in Dubai.
When she left it was a little bit hard. I was happy for her but at the same time I was worried about her.
She escaped because she didn't have much freedom in Dubai, like driving a car or traveling or, you know, just making choices for your own future.
While everyone was searching for Shamsa, Latifa and she were still talking.
The whole time she was communicating with me.
But according to a letter supposedly written by Shamsa after she left home, they found her.
A group of Shae Kool-A-Hum it's agents allegedly appeared.
They grabbed her kicking its cream in through her in the car.
Shamsa claims she was transported to another Shae Kool-A-Hum it's British estates.
Around 5am the next day, she was on a helicopter and then a plane on the way back to Dubai.
Shamsa was kidnapped and brought back to UAE.
Latifa was there. She was just a teenager at the time and won't imagine she wanted to see her sister.
But Shamsa didn't come back to her house. Latifa says she was locked away at a palace.
We snuck in a telephone so we could talk to her.
She attempted to get some help for her.
And Shamsa wasn't giving up hope. Not yet.
She supposedly managed to get a letter to an immigration lawyer she'd met in London.
And the story eventually reached British journalists.
They released the story to the Guardian.
Google Shamsa on MacTomb and it's the first things that come up.
Now growing up in Dubai, I know there's nothing more important than the family name in Emirati culture.
It's everything. They're also fiercely private.
Problems within a family are handled internally and never talked about with outsiders.
So the fact that this became a news story was a big problem for Sheikh Mo.
But it's hard to get Western readers to care about things happening halfway around the world,
especially when they're happening to an Arab woman.
And before long, the story had been forgotten.
I lost my communication with Shamsa.
And now Latifa claims she was kept under even tighter lock and key.
They wouldn't allow me to have internet, they'd have phone.
With even less freedom than before, Latifa started to lose it.
She needed to do something.
So I decided I'm going to escape.
I'm going to go to Oman.
Oman's about two hours east of Dubai.
I'm going to just go there and find a lawyer or something and I'm going to help Shamsa.
And the worst case scenario, if they catch me, they're going to put me with her.
She has her sister with her. So she's not going to do anything, you know?
Latifa says she ran away for the first time.
They caught me at the border.
I was very, very naive. I thought you could just go.
I didn't have the internet to research it.
I didn't have anyone to talk to, to give me advice.
I was totally by myself.
Latifa says she was immediately brought back home.
My father's right hand man put me in prison under my father's orders.
I think the first time they tortured me, I didn't feel any pain because I was in so much shock.
It was like somebody was hitting me through a pillow or something.
Now Sheikh Mohammed's office has denied that Latifa has ever been arrested or detained.
All we have to go on is Latifa's word.
They told me that your father told us to beat you until we kill you.
I didn't know when one day ended and the next began and then they would come in the middle of the night,
put me out of bed to beat me after the torture sessions.
I couldn't even walk. So I would crawl to the bathroom to open a tap to get some water.
She says she couldn't change her clothes.
She had no soap to wash herself with.
She slept on a thin mattress that she claimed was covered in blood and feces.
I think in the last few months they gave me a toothbrush, just one toothbrush.
Towards the end they gave me a tide.
So I would use a toilet water and powder on my skin to try to stay clean.
When she finally got to visit her family a year later, everything in Dubai seemed different.
Everything was just a shock to me. I remember the car felt like it was going so fast because I had not moved for one year and one month.
I went home having all these people talking normally to me.
Normal after what I've been through, I don't know if normal is anymore. Nothing is normal.
According to Latifa, she was put back in prison for another two years.
When I got out the second time, I hated everyone.
She wasn't even 21 and she says she'd spent more than three years in prison.
I mean, it's something that really changes you know, makes you lose trust in people.
So Latifa retreated into horse riding and scuba diving.
She became friends with Tina and eventually she told Tina the whole story.
She told me how she was in prison for three and a half years, how she was tortured and treated during all this time.
And it was obviously shocking, you know, I was crying when I was hearing about all that.
Tina says it was about a year after that when Latifa came to her with a request.
She asked me to help her to leave Dubai, to escape from Dubai.
Latifa wanted to escape Dubai. This time for good.
What happened next makes the plot of a James Bond movie sound boring.
Because it involves a dramatic escape, a yacht and a video that would change everything.
We heard gunshots from the upper deck.
They said, we are going to kill you or you're never going to see your family again.
At first I just thought it was a hoax.
If you are watching this video, either I'm dead or I'm in a very, very, very bad situation.
That's next time on Infamous.
Infamous is created and executive produced by Gabriel Sherman and me, Vanessa, Gregorriatus.
This episode was co-hosted by Natalie Robamed, who wrote it with Heather Shrewing.
Producing by Heather Shrewing, Natalia Winkelman, Lily Houston Smith and Grace Hereman.
Princess Latifa did not comment for this series.
Shoshish Malavitz is our managing producer and editor, sound designed by David Devarot, recording by Ewan Lai Tremuen, and Fact Checking by Matt Giles.
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Cher and myself.
Campside Media's operations team is Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren and Destiny Dingle.
If you're enjoying Infamous, please rate and review the show. It helps us more than you know.
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