Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum: Who is the leader of Dubai?

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is the 70-year-old Dubai billionaire leader and vice president of the United Arab Emirates.

In the Middle East, he is renowned for overseeing the transformation of Dubai into a leading commercial and tourist destination. Elsewhere, he is perhaps best known for his connection to horse racing, as the owner of the Godolphin stables.

He has now made the headlines after being recognized by the London High Court as having kidnapped and forcibly returned two of his daughters to Dubai and having conducted a campaign of intimidation against his former wife, Princess Haya.

Sheikh Mohammed was born in 1949 in his family home in Shindagha, near Dubai Creek. He was the third of four sons of Sheikh Rashid Al Maktoum, who ruled Dubai for 32 years from 1958.

After finishing high school in 1965, Sheikh Mohammed moved to the United Kingdom to study English at a language school in Cambridge. The young sheikh then attended a six-month training court at the British Army Officer Cadets School in Aldershot, Hampshire.

In 1968, after his return to Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed accompanied his father to a meeting with the then ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan, during which they agreed to a union that would lead to the creation of a federation of the emirates.

After the United Arab Emirates gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1971, Sheikh Mohammed was appointed Minister of Defense – a position he still holds.

Sheikh Mohammed was also heavily involved in his father's plan to compensate for the decrease in oil reserves in Dubai by diversifying its economy and becoming an international financial and commercial center, as well as a tourist destination. .

Today, more than 95% of the emirate's gross domestic product is non-oil, tourism contributing 20%.

The population of Dubai has also grown from around 40,000 in the 1960s to 3.3 million, including nearly 3.1 million non-Emirates, many of whom live in the hundreds of skyscrapers that fill its horizon.

In 1990 Sheikh Rashid died of a long illness resulting from a stroke. He was succeeded by Mohammed's older brother, Maktoum.

Five years later, Sheikh Maktoum was appointed Crown Prince Mohammed of Dubai. He also handed him over much of the day-to-day management of the emirate.

Sheikh Mohammed became sovereign of Dubai and vice-president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates in 2006, after the death of his brother at the age of 62 during a visit to Australia.

Under his leadership, the development of Dubai continued rapidly.

In 2008, the emirate unveiled the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa; Dubai Mall, then the world's largest shopping center by total area; and the Dubai metro.

These ambitious projects, however, depended on borrowing billions of dollars.

The global financial crisis brought about the collapse of the Dubai real estate market and, in 2009, state-linked companies almost defaulted on their debts. Abu Dhabi stepped in and loaned the government of Dubai the money it desperately needed.

The construction boom in Dubai also depended on low-paid migrant construction workers, many of whom complained of being exploited.

Sheikh Mohammed also became famous for his involvement in horse racing and is known to have transformed it into a global industry.

As a child, he rode on the beaches of Dubai and was introduced to the sport in 1967 in the United Kingdom. Ten years later, he experienced his first success as an owner.

The sheikh then created the largest horse team in the world, Godolphin, as well as the successful stallion farm, Darley.

Godolphin – which has facilities in the United Arab Emirates, England, the Republic of Ireland, Australia, Japan and the United States – has won 6,000 races worldwide since 1992, including 315 prestigious races group one.

Sheikh Mohammed frequently attends major horse racing events such as Royal Ascot, where he was photographed with Queen Elizabeth II.

Sheikh Mohammed shared the love of horses with his sixth and "junior" wife, Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, the daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan and the half-sister of King Abdullah II. The couple married in Amman in 2004 and had two children, Al Jalila and Zayed.

Princess Haya painted a picture of a perfect family life in interviews, but cracks started to appear in 2018 when Sheikha Latifa, one of Sheikh Mohammed's adult daughters with another woman, attempted to flee the United Arab Emirates with the help of a former French spy and a Finnish fitness instructor.

A boat carrying them was intercepted at sea off the coast of India and Sheikha Latifa was returned to Dubai. In a video previously filmed, she alleged that she had been imprisoned for more than three years and subjected to physical violence after another unsuccessful escape attempt in 2002.

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Associates of Sheikha Latifa said she was detained at home. But the Dubai government insisted that Sheikha Latifa had been "vulnerable to exploitation" and was "now safe".

Princess Haya echoed the government statement of the time. But after fleeing Dubai to the United Kingdom via Germany with their children in April 2019, sources said she had heard of new information regarding Sheikha Latifa.

Sheikh Mohammed did not comment on the breakdown of his marriage, but he wrote an angry poem accusing an anonymous woman of "betrayal and betrayal" and posted it on Instagram.

In July, Princess Haya sought a protection order from forced marriage and a non-aggression order from the United Kingdom High Court in London – as well as the guardianship of their children. Sheikh Mohammed asked for the return of the children to Dubai.

Eight months later, the High Court issued a series of investigative judgments That said, Sheikh Mohammed had ordered and orchestrated the forced return of Sheikha Latifa in 2002 and 2018, as well as the illegal abduction of her older sister Sheikha Shamsa in 2000.

Sheikha Shamsa fled the family's British property in Surrey that year, but was later recovered in Cambridgeshire by sheikh's agents and forcibly returned to Dubai. A request from the Cambridgeshire police to visit Dubai to investigate was denied.

The court found that Sheikh Mohammed "continues to maintain a regime whereby these two young women are deprived of their liberty".

He also said that Princess Haya, who was having an adultery with a bodyguard, is now living in fear of her life after receiving numerous threats in Dubai and London. These included a pistol placed on his pillow.

Sheikh Mohammed rejected the judgments and the conclusions and called in vain to keep them out of the public domain.

He said the appeal "was made to protect the best interests and well-being of children" and that "the result does not protect my children from media attention from the same so that other children in family proceedings in the UK are protected. "

"As head of government, I was unable to participate in the Court's investigation process. This resulted in the publication of an" investigative "judgment which does not tell inevitably only one side of the story, "he added.