Princess Latifa, the 32-year-old daughter of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, has not been seen in public for some time, and some have even expressed fears she may not be alive. Knowing her sister’s fate, she had tried to escape from confinement in February 2018, planned it meticulously and yet was caught in no time. How could they foil her plan?

Princess describes her confinement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts8FJhKK7ss

The phone numbers of her friends and associates have turned up in the list unearthed by the Pegasus Project, a joint media investigation on the possible misuse of the extremely powerful spyware from Israel’s NSO Group.

The investigative report of the Washington Post says that within hours of her going missing, the numbers of the princess and her friends were added to the list of the phones targeted for surveillance with Pegasus. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/21/dubai-princesses-spyware/]

It has not been established if these numbers were indeed hacked. NSO denies the list was only for surveillance purposes. The phones were not available for forensic examination.

Curiously, the princess probably suspected a phone hack. Before escaping – before hiding in a car trunk, launching from a dinghy and transferring from water scooters to a yacht from where she was caught by soldiers – she did leave her phone in the washroom of the café from where she started her journey. [Timeline: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56085734] It is possible that her friends’ hacked phones revealed her location.

Pegasus can even turn on the camera and the microphone of the targeted phone, without the victim’s knowledge, making it a complete spying device.

Another, related number found on the list (originally leaked by Amnesty International) is that of Haya bint Hussein, one of the sheikh’s six wives. It was added around the time when she fled Dubai in 2019. She had expressed her concern about Latifa’s confinement before she fled to London with her two young children.

In May, soon after UN rights officials demanded the UAE to provide ‘proof of life’, three photos of a relaxed Latifa were posted on Instagram. [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-n-asks-proof-life-missing-princess-latifa-n1258371] Her latest ‘photo appearance’ was last month.

Also read:

A London court’s fact-finding report on her 2018 capture:
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Al-M-Factfinding-APPROVED-Judgment-111219-for-publication.pdf