06 Mar REPORTING RESTRICTIONS – DETAILS OF FAMILY COURT JUDGMENTS PUBLISHED AFTER UK SUPREME COURT REFUSES TO HEAR APPEAL FROM DUBAI’S RULER

Details of two family court judgments involving Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed’s two children with his ex-wife, Princess Haya of Jordan can now be reported after the UK Supreme Court refused the Sheikh’s attempt to prevent their publication.

Sheikh Mohammed had been involved in a dispute with his ex-wife Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, half-sister of Jordan’s King Abdullah, over the welfare of their two children since last May.

Late last year, Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of London’s High Court Family Division, handed down two fact finding judgments in the case. The details of judgments in family law cases are rarely released, but Sir Andrew decided in January that it was in the public interest that some information be made public. Sheikh Mohammed appealed that decision, but the Court of Appeal refused to overturn it.

Sheikh Mohammed then sought to appeal to the Supreme Court, but it refused to hear his appeal, saying his case did “not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance”.

The judgments contained “findings of fact” about allegations raised by Princess Haya during hearings over the last nine months.

Much of the fact-finding ruling records the events surrounding the disappearances of Princess Shamsa from Cambridge in 2000, when she was 19, and of Princess Latifa, who was seized by Indian army commandos from the Indian Ocean in 2018, when she was 32, before being forcibly returned to Dubai.

The Sheikh was found to have “not been open and honest with the court” and the judge found on the balance of probabilities that he had ordered the abduction of two of his daughters and orchestrated a campaign of intimidation against his former wife.

The billionaire Sheikh, 70, is the vice-president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai. He is also the founder of the Godolphin horse racing stable and last year received a trophy from the Queen after one of his horses won at Royal Ascot.

Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein, 45, is the daughter of the former King Hussein of Jordan and half-sister of King Abdullah II of Jordan. She was Sheikh Mohammed’s sixth wife and reportedly fled Dubai last year with their two young children.

Sheikh Mohammed has denied all the allegations against him.