Dubai ruler says British court ruling one-sided

LONDON－Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum said on Thursday that a judgment by a senior judge in the United Kingdom that he had abducted two of his daughters and subjected his wife to a campaign of intimidation was "only one side of the story".

"As a head of government, I was not able to participate in the court's fact-finding process. This has resulted in the release of a 'fact-finding' judgment which inevitably tells only one side of the story," he said in a statement issued by his lawyers.

He said a decision to allow the judgments to be made public did not protect his children "from media attention in the way that other children in family proceedings in the UK are protected".

According to the judgment unsealed on Thursday, Sheikh Mohammed, 70, "acted in a manner from the end of 2018 which has been aimed at intimidating and frightening" his ex-wife, Princess Haya, 45.

Judge Andrew McFarlane also said the sheikh "ordered and orchestrated" the abductions and forced return to Dubai of two of his adult daughters from another marriage: Sheikha Shamsa in August 2000, and Sheikha Latifa in 2002 and again in 2018.

The judge made rulings in December and January after a battle between the estranged spouses over the welfare of their two children, but the sheikh fought to prevent them from being made public. The UK Supreme Court quashed that attempt on Thursday.

Haya, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, married the Dubai ruler in 2004, becoming his second official wife, the court said. The couple have a daughter, Jalila, 12, and 8-year-old son Zayed, the youngest of the ruler's 25 children.

In April 2019, Haya fled the Gulf emirate with her children, saying she had become terrified of her husband's threats and intimidation.

The threats continued after the princess moved to London, the judge said, adding that the sheikh had used the apparatus of the state "to threaten, intimidate, mistreat and oppress with a total disregard for the rule of law".

In May 2019, Sheikh Mohammed launched legal action, seeking the children's return to Dubai, while Haya asked for them to be made wards of the British court and allowed to stay in the UK.

The sheikh later dropped his bid to take the children back to Dubai, and fought unsuccessfully to prevent the court issuing a fact-finding judgment on his wife's allegations.

The judge found that Haya's allegations about the threats and abductions met the civil standard of proof on the balance of probabilities.

Sheikh Mohammed, who is also vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, is popular at home and is seen as a modernizing force.