The Runaway Princesses, Episode 2: Escape

In The Dark

The New Yorker

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 28.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Princess Latifa is desperate to help her sister Shamsa, who’s been captured, drugged, and imprisoned on her father’s orders. She makes a plan to flee Dubai.

"The Runaway Princesses" is a four-part narrative series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Subscribers to The New Yorker have early, ad-free access to all episodes. Visit newyorker.com/dark to subscribe.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just a note that you can get all four episodes of the Runaway Princesses, add free right now, at New Yorker.com slash dark.
0:08.8	Princess Shamsa hasn't been seen in public since the day her father's men captured her on a street in England
0:15.2	and she was flown back to Dubai in a private jet. Pictures of other members of Dubai's royal family
0:21.1	show up on social media and in magazines that cover Royals.
0:24.8	You can see Sheikh Mohammed's wives and sons and daughters participating in Olympic events,
0:29.2	or going skydiving, or watching horses race at Ascot, but not Shamsa.
0:34.0	Shamsa's sister Latifah has said in writings and recordings that after Shamsa was caught,
0:39.0	she was kept drugged, and she was watched constantly. Latifah wasn't allowed to see her.
0:46.4	As the months went by it became clear to Latifah that no one from the outside world was coming
0:51.2	to help.
0:52.2	So two years after Shamza was
0:54.2	abducted and brought back to Dubai, Latifah decided to take matters into her own
0:59.2	hands. I decided I'm going to escape. I'm going to leave UAE. I'm going to escape I'm going to leave UAE I'm going to find a lawyer in another country
1:06.2	Like I'm going to go to Oman I'm going to just go there and I'm going to go find a lawyer or something and I'm going to help She. And the worst case scenario, if they catch me,
1:13.6	they're going to put me with her.
1:14.5	I'm going to be in prison with her.
1:15.8	So at least I can see her and I'm happy and she has her sister with her.
1:19.7	In 2002, when she was just 16, Latifah made her first attempt.
1:26.1	My colleague Heidi Blake at the New Yorker obtained Princess Latifah's written account of what
1:30.5	happened next. I escaped from my mother's house in the early hours of June 15, 2002.
1:38.0	I used a ladder to scale the wall of the garden.
1:41.0	I was wearing a black dish dash and had a large thick jacket on top.
	...

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