Sheik Mo

... and former Irish President Mary Robinson maintains that both girls are fine and happy.

Duped groveller.

I wonder what Charlie Appleby thinks.

Can't see him invited in one the royal carriages this year at Ascot.

Or Andrew.

Not a word about the case on the RP site.

Only Princess Haya could have done what she's done being a princess prior marriage. Maybe the racing fraternity could shun Sheikh Mo for all his influence and wealth seeing knowing what he did to two of his daughters. He's allowed several wives, but his daughters and women in his kingdom are treated like 2nd class citizens.

I think the creator of the universe has erred bestowing that part of the region with abundance of oil given the huge inequality between men and women.

The Times
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, and close friend of the British royal family, is nothing if not conscious of his status.

It is hardly surprising that he fought tooth and nail to keep secret the allegations swirling around his divorce from Princess Haya of Jordan, and their subsequent custody battle.

Their publication will also be a big embarrassment to the Foreign Office and the wider British establishment. The dispute, involving the country’s closest friends in the Middle East, showed the lengths to which it will go to save the face of its allies.

At the heart of the allegations made by Princess Haya is a quandary that faces everyone who has any dealings with the emirate, so popular among British tourists and businessmen.

They come for its sunny winter climate, tax-free business environment and luxury lifestyle, and usually return home happy. But for those who fall foul of its darker side, in particular its antiquated legal system, the outcome is less favourable.

False accusations by former business partners or embittered ex-spouses can lead to years in prison, or at best a nasty encounter with police cells. Residents who have built their lives and fortunes can be deported on a whim, after someone takes offence at a Facebook post.

Sheikh Mohammed is Dubai’s emblem. He is modern, adventurous, closely tied into the west, with a love of high-tech and bling. But he also has deep roots in the patriarchal, tough-minded, often charming but sometimes violent, practices of the desert society from which Dubai has so recently sprung.

Those two sides of his character met in his personal life, in his two main wives, Princess Haya and Sheikha Hind bint Maktoum al-Maktoum. Sheikha Hind is his first, senior, and so-called “dynastic” wife, a cousin who has borne him 12 children. Among them is Sheikh Hamdan, his heir.

In keeping with the Gulf’s conservative conventions, her photograph has never been published so that, if she is ever seen in public, no one knows of it. She lives mostly at their estate at Longcross, Surrey.

Princess Haya, half-sister to King Abdullah of Jordan, is young, western-oriented, and a case study in how to be a modern royal. Schooled at Bryanston in Dorset, she attended Oxford University, competed for Jordan at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in equestrianism, and appeared regularly at Sheikh Mohammed’s side at Ascot and other race events. She owns her own horses.

This sort of double life is not that unusual for men of Sheikh Mohammed’s power and wealth, even if in his case it was more public than most. Now, however, it has imploded.

It did so because the two formal wives were not the only women in his life — he also maintained at various times four other women, whose exact marriage status has never been made clear.

All six women kept separate households, dotted around Dubai, with their own children, between 20 and 30 in total. The daughters of one woman, an Algerian believed to be named Houria Ahmed Lamara, have caused him particular grief.

It was Sheikha Shamsa who first ran away, in 1999, and was apparently seized from a street in Cambridge.

Her younger sister Latifa, who spent years trying to rescue her from semi-imprisonment, escaped Dubai two years ago, before being returned in the incident that led to Princess Haya’s own flight.

Sheikh Mohammed was clearly furious about the disobedience of all three women, despite the love poems he subsequently wrote to Princess Haya. “Let the past be; soften your heart/ Forgive my mistakes, and reward my good deeds,” one read.

This should not be a shock. There have been glimpses of his temper before, not least in one of his rare meetings with foreign journalists in 2009 when he was deeply uncomfortable at being challenged over his handling of the financial crisis the emirate was going through.

By that time, though this was not public knowledge, he had also moved decisively against his eldest son, Sheikh Rashid, the previous crown prince. Sheikh Rashid is thought to have suffered a drug problem and to have pulled a gun on, even shot, a member of staff.

He was not only disinherited; his villa was demolished. He died, apparently broken, in 2015.

In person, Sheikh Mohammed seems entirely genuine in his desire to build a modern, outward-looking, tolerant society. Whether you like Dubai or not, it is strikingly different from the city in which he grew up in the 1950s, with his grandfather, Sheikh Saeed, and father Sheikh Rashid.

Sheikh Rashid’s wedding, all the way back in 1939, was a remarkable and historic event: Saeed had posted Bedouin marksmen on the battlements of the fort where it was held, and they gunned down a group of guests as they arrived, cousins who had been plotting to replace him. Merchants who supported them later had their eyes taken out with pokers.

Dubai has moved on from that Game of Thrones era. But its shadows still linger.

A particularly interesting article Mr C.
Wasn't aware that No 1 wife lived in Longcross; had rather assumed she was kept in Dubai.

In your dreams.

Questions being raised about whether he should be allowed into this country. Undesirable alien.

Any word on the Bodyguard allegedly caught shafting the wife. ??

Willieless ?

Was thinking the same myself Mr Salmon, hes in England and his Baws are in Dubai. !!

Last one...reminds me of John Wayne as ol’ Genghis

What do we know?

Yes Edward Prince of Wales and his brother Richard vanished from the tower and never seen again.

The chickens come home to roost for Sheik Mo. Always amazed he never got sanctioned for the dangerous steroids, anaesthetics, and anti-inflammatory drugs being shipped into UAE during the drug scandal his horse racing trainer was involved in. Can't believe the authorities can turn a blind eye to kidnap, death threats and drugging humans.

The Bodyguard - Ray Winstone
Princess Haya - Nadia from Bake Off (well, she's on every other f**king programme)
Sheikh Mo - Louie Spence

OIL.

Is that what they call it now