8 ms·

Missing Emirati princess 'planned escape for seven years'

98 points by zerogvt 8y ago

moftz 8y ago
A (presumably) Dubaian team boarded a US flagged boat in (possibly) Indian territorial waters. No one is concerned over this? Was the yacht not really a US vessel? If it was actually a Dubaian vessel then that team probably has authority over it just like how the USCG can board any US ship anywhere, anytime. Did a Dubaian team actually grab her? Maybe it was the Indian coast guard who deported her back to Dubai. According to emirateswoman.com, shes being married off. I hope she gets another chance to escape to a more free life.
- iamshs 8y ago
  Indian Coast Guard raided the vessel and deported her back ASAP.
jnty 8y ago
These and other incidents with the UAE recently highlight the troubling willingness with which western states and businesses still jump into bed with the authoritarian dictatorship du jour (usually on the proviso that it has a lot of oil) only to 'discover' years later that they're actually quite unpleasant.
- number6 8y ago
  UAE is a kingdom. This means it isn't a dictatorship. Sounds fishy? Not for officials...
  - mtgx 8y ago
    And China isn't a dictatorship, despite now having a "permanent president" and permanent party in power that aims to fully serve this president (otherwise they wouldn't have made him president virtually unanimously -- except for two token "opposition guys", because you know, otherwise it may have looked weird from the outside). We're playing semantics here, aren't we? Of course it's a dictatorship.
    - corndoge 8y ago
      Parent meant that officials can simply refer to the fact that it's officially a kingdom when questioned about such deals
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      China at least has a ruling class, power isn’t completely concentrated in one person (Xi still has to negotiate between the few ruling red families and factions). I guess from that perspective, one could say there are no true dictatorships, only countries that register less or more in the dictatorship scale.
      - wavefunction 8y ago
        That's true of many of these arab regimes as well. Hence MBS' consolidation of power recently, for example. A monarchy is meaningless if you can blow off the power of the monarch. I am deeply sympathetic to the plight of their peoples.
        seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        Sure. But all these authoritarian regimes are authoritarian in their own ways. Dictatorship specifically means power concentrated in one individual, and that is almost an impossible bar to pass these days; power is necessarily diffused into a few or more power brokers, but the result is the same to the people.
- at-fates-hands 8y ago
  > highlight the troubling willingness with which western states and businesses still jump into bed with the authoritarian dictatorship du jour (usually on the proviso that it has a lot of oil) This point is still a mystery to me. If it's always been about oil, then the US is currently the largest oil producer. Why are we still relying on these countries for anything?? Is it leveraging their wealth for other investments?
  - Nursie 8y ago
    Massive concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, a few who are willing to spend it lavishly on western goods and services? Might be something to do with it. Their economies are not amongst the world's largest, but they have disproportionate power to spend for these reasons, AFAICT
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Many people in the US government are also interested in selling weapons, as well as making sure the kings of those countries are investing a good portion of their money back in the US.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - wavefunction 8y ago
      Many people in Silicon Valley are interested in making sure the kings of those countries are investing a good portion of their money back into their tech ventures.
  - awakeasleep 8y ago
    The answer to this is 'geopolitics' which is basically unknowable to schmucks like us, but you can read the conjecture of people who follow it and see if it makes sense to you: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/11/if-saudi-oil-no-longer-matters-why-is-trump-still-supporting-them.html https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/11/if-saudi-oil-no-longer...
  - 8y ago
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > the troubling willingness with which western states and businesses still jump into bed with the authoritarian dictatorship du jour The Dictator's Handbook [1] covers this in their chapter on foreign aid. TL; DR Democratically-elected leaders like dictatorships because it's easy to buy off dictators to achieve the electorate's foreign policy goals. Qatar lets us base with them for little compared to the diplomatic, economic and other concessions democracies require from the U.S. for such privileges. (Even near-moribund democracies like Pakistan's.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook
- girvo 8y ago
  I’m trying not to come across as flippant, but in more than one western democracy, we’ve voted in parties that continue to pass draconian authoritarian laws eroding away our civil liberties and rights as humans. I don’t think it’s particularly surprising they said governments aren’t all that upset about doing business with other more open authoritarian states...
- geff82 8y ago
  The UAE is a sheikhdom. While that does not come with all the goods from a democracy, it is much better than your average dictatorship. In theory it is similar, yet in practice a sheikh needs the support of the majority of his people. Also, a sheikh kidnapping his own daughter is really bad, yet it is a far cry from invading other nations, as America, England and Russia do all the time.
jachee 8y ago
"Princess" is pretty disingenuous in that it lessens the Emirates' treatment of women as possessions. It's a sad reminder that equality still has a long way to go.
- cirgue 8y ago
  > "Princess" is pretty disingenuous in that it lessens the Emirates' treatment of women as possessions. In being the daughter of one of the royal family, she is actually a princess in the titular sense. Having lived in the emirates for a few years, princess is a pretty accurate term for how many Emirati women from the several royal families live: lavish material circumstances with close to zero autonomy and very explicit expectations around marriage.
  - jachee 8y ago
    Her "title" shouldn't matter. No one deserves to be held captive against their will.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      Right, but words have accepted definitions. And she fits the definition of a princess.
      - jachee 8y ago
        A more responsible headline would read "Woman escapes captivity after seven years of planning, kidnapped at gun point on the high seas, hasn't been seen since." Princess-ness has nothing to do with the story except to minimize her humanity.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  I'm not sure what being royalty has to do with women's rights. You don't need rights to be a princess, just parentage. It's also weird to try to inject wokeness into talk of a princess through feminism when the idea of royalty is a deeply racist institution; I would think you'd take that angle.
iamshs 8y ago
What a gut-wrenching story. Perpetual control over your child seems so suffocating and counter intuitive. So much so that the kid had to plan an operation to escape. More background to the story: 1. India returned the princess to protect strategic interests - https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-returned-runaway-dubai-princess-to-protect-strategic-interests https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-returned-runaway-dubai-pr... 2. http://www.asianage.com/india/all-india/300318/kidnapped-dubai-princess-returns-safely-to-uae-with-indias-help.html http://www.asianage.com/india/all-india/300318/kidnapped-dub... 3. Indian Prime Minister authorized the operation to seize her and return back to UAE - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/28/indias-modi-authorized-capture-of-runaway-dubai-princess-newspaper-claims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/28...
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > India returned the princess to protect strategic interests Why India?! Western Europe, Japan and the United States have strong judicial systems. The EU, in particular, wouldn't require any pre-declarations to be filed prior to claiming asylum. The only advantage to India is being able to disappear, e.g. change names and retire to a remote village. Unfortunately, she doesn't appear to have taken advantage of that.
  - breitling 8y ago
    India isn't exactly a multi-cultural melting pot. A foreigner would stand out like a sore thumb. She would be trading one prison for another.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
Rjevski 8y ago
What a fucked up country.
- F_r_k 8y ago
  List of wrongful convictions in the USA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions... It's not even a full list
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    What's your point? One thing is a list of wrongful convictions - failures of the justice system - but what happened here isn't a failure, it's the system working as designed.
    - miracle2k 8y ago
      That is true, it's an important distinction to make. Now, in terms of the design of the criminal justice system, the US does not fare so well either, but we don't really have to debate that here. Still, your comment was unnecessarily ignorant and insulting; presumably there are people for who the UAE is more than the misdeeds of the ruling family; the fact that it isn't to us, is really our failing. Your post just wasn't very helpful.
    - rhacker 8y ago
      What do you mean by working as designed. The founders of the US said, why don't we make sure there are some major bullet holes in this design so we make sure some innocent people go to jail? If it was part of the design, then it was the design, if it was not, it is a defect. Think of software engineering in this case. And his point is that someone reduced the UAE and all its history and people to "what a fucked up country" then it's absolutely relevant. What about the destruction of the indians and native land, the going to war for OIL for the past 20 years and killing basically indiscriminately. Do I need to remind us of slavery? I'm a US citizen, but be prepared to take salt in the face if someone reduces your country to a sentence like that.
baybal2 8y ago
What a messed up former "navy officer." She entrusted nothing less than her life to him, yet he surrendered her without fight. If a man like him ever bothered to even turn off a transponder, let alone prepare for an armed assault.
- maeln 8y ago
  If he fought, what would have been the result ? He would have been dead and she would still go back to UAE. He made the only logical choice. Life is not a video game.
  - amelius 8y ago
    He could have taken her hostage.
  - tc313 8y ago
    And he’s already doing a huge favor by helping her escape. Why do people expect him to sacrifice his life for her too?
  - baybal2 8y ago
    > He made the only logical choice. That a morally messed up judgement. Hearing something like that again, and again, I long stopped wondering why people in the West come to the situation you have now. Spirit, courage and integrity - you must have them!
- readhn 8y ago
  Are you serious? Who are you going to fight? Special ops brigade single handed - this is not a movie! Everyone would be shot dead in 3 seconds. if anything - it was a logistics mistake on his part - going to and making contact with Indian authorities (which would extradite back to UAE.) He should have involved professional traffickers - they'd take her anywhere for $400K. Ideally to the closest USA embassy then make some public noise after they got there. If USA was the final destination anyway.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
panzerboy 8y ago
What shocks me is how can a parent torture (or order somebody to torture) their own children? Don't they love them?
- cbluth 8y ago
  love? in a royal family?
- phs2501 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case Not everyone is good.
- Brockenstein 8y ago
  You might be surprised what people consider love, and how all sorts of other beliefs get intertwined with it. IE you have strong sacred long held beliefs that your female children are not independent, are your property. That you want the best for them, according to your beliefs and your customs, which you believe are right. That resorting to "tough love" to get wayward children on the right track is for their own good. A lot of folks would claim or deny they're hurting their children, it's their children who are being hurtful by being "disobedient", bringing dishonor, or rejecting the values on which they were raised. The list goes on and on, the rationalizations are enumerable. And even aside all that, some people just love exercising their authority over others and actively seek opportunities to do it to the maximum degree they possibly can. It's pretty easy to rationalize cruelty as love. And everyone is the hero of their own story, so not always a lot of incentive to be objective or introspective about it.
- Tuna-Fish 8y ago
  In order to develop the kind of relationship with one's children you'd expect, you have to actually spend time with them. Sheikh Al Maktoum has 23 children with 7 different women. At that point, some of them are going to be strangers to you.
YorkshireSeason 8y ago
Disappearing royals are also a ... feature ... of Saudi-Arabia's ruling family, see [1, 2]. It's interesting to speculate why Khashoggi's case garnered so much more attention. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-40926963 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-40926963 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2KYQWPUbG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2KYQWPUbG4
- wavefunction 8y ago
  Khashoggi came from a powerful and influential family in the KSA, plus he was a journalist for the Washington Post.
  - YorkshireSeason 8y ago
    The other princes in the BBC article & video came from an even more powerful and influential family in the KSA.
ArrayList 8y ago
Missing princess? Sounds like a job for an overweight plumber in red shirt and overalls with a great stache.
ptero 8y ago
This is a horrible story indeed and I hope it gets public attention to lessen the hell the princess is going through. It is always easy to be smart after the fact, but to me that the naval officer thought through the escape to getting out of the country, but not what happens next. For him, a French citizen, getting out to a neutral country is the end. For her, a UAE citizen without any right to stay elsewhere, it is at best a midpoint. He could have arranged for news coverage prior to the mission by discreetly talking to some high caliber journalists so they can prep coverage and he could have involved professionals (e.g., traffickers who move refugees and have global networks).
Markoff 8y ago
let's hope we will switch to electric ASAP so these dictatorships won't have any leverage over other countries and they can go back to their camels

98 points by zerogvt 8y ago

A (presumably) Dubaian team boarded a US flagged boat in (possibly) Indian territorial waters. No one is concerned over this? Was the yacht not really a US vessel? If it was actually a Dubaian vessel then that team probably has authority over it just like how the USCG can board any US ship anywhere, anytime. Did a Dubaian team actually grab her? Maybe it was the Indian coast guard who deported her back to Dubai. According to emirateswoman.com, shes being married off. I hope she gets another chance to escape to a more free life.

iamshs 8y ago
Indian Coast Guard raided the vessel and deported her back ASAP.

jnty 8y ago

These and other incidents with the UAE recently highlight the troubling willingness with which western states and businesses still jump into bed with the authoritarian dictatorship du jour (usually on the proviso that it has a lot of oil) only to 'discover' years later that they're actually quite unpleasant.

number6 8y ago
UAE is a kingdom. This means it isn't a dictatorship. Sounds fishy? Not for officials...
- mtgx 8y ago
  And China isn't a dictatorship, despite now having a "permanent president" and permanent party in power that aims to fully serve this president (otherwise they wouldn't have made him president virtually unanimously -- except for two token "opposition guys", because you know, otherwise it may have looked weird from the outside). We're playing semantics here, aren't we? Of course it's a dictatorship.
  - corndoge 8y ago
    Parent meant that officials can simply refer to the fact that it's officially a kingdom when questioned about such deals
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    China at least has a ruling class, power isn’t completely concentrated in one person (Xi still has to negotiate between the few ruling red families and factions). I guess from that perspective, one could say there are no true dictatorships, only countries that register less or more in the dictatorship scale.
    - wavefunction 8y ago
      That's true of many of these arab regimes as well. Hence MBS' consolidation of power recently, for example. A monarchy is meaningless if you can blow off the power of the monarch. I am deeply sympathetic to the plight of their peoples.
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        Sure. But all these authoritarian regimes are authoritarian in their own ways. Dictatorship specifically means power concentrated in one individual, and that is almost an impossible bar to pass these days; power is necessarily diffused into a few or more power brokers, but the result is the same to the people.
at-fates-hands 8y ago
> highlight the troubling willingness with which western states and businesses still jump into bed with the authoritarian dictatorship du jour (usually on the proviso that it has a lot of oil) This point is still a mystery to me. If it's always been about oil, then the US is currently the largest oil producer. Why are we still relying on these countries for anything?? Is it leveraging their wealth for other investments?
- Nursie 8y ago
  Massive concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, a few who are willing to spend it lavishly on western goods and services? Might be something to do with it. Their economies are not amongst the world's largest, but they have disproportionate power to spend for these reasons, AFAICT
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Many people in the US government are also interested in selling weapons, as well as making sure the kings of those countries are investing a good portion of their money back in the US.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - wavefunction 8y ago
    Many people in Silicon Valley are interested in making sure the kings of those countries are investing a good portion of their money back into their tech ventures.
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  The answer to this is 'geopolitics' which is basically unknowable to schmucks like us, but you can read the conjecture of people who follow it and see if it makes sense to you: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/11/if-saudi-oil-no-longer-matters-why-is-trump-still-supporting-them.html https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/11/if-saudi-oil-no-longer...
- 8y ago
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> the troubling willingness with which western states and businesses still jump into bed with the authoritarian dictatorship du jour The Dictator's Handbook [1] covers this in their chapter on foreign aid. TL; DR Democratically-elected leaders like dictatorships because it's easy to buy off dictators to achieve the electorate's foreign policy goals. Qatar lets us base with them for little compared to the diplomatic, economic and other concessions democracies require from the U.S. for such privileges. (Even near-moribund democracies like Pakistan's.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook
girvo 8y ago
I’m trying not to come across as flippant, but in more than one western democracy, we’ve voted in parties that continue to pass draconian authoritarian laws eroding away our civil liberties and rights as humans. I don’t think it’s particularly surprising they said governments aren’t all that upset about doing business with other more open authoritarian states...
geff82 8y ago
The UAE is a sheikhdom. While that does not come with all the goods from a democracy, it is much better than your average dictatorship. In theory it is similar, yet in practice a sheikh needs the support of the majority of his people. Also, a sheikh kidnapping his own daughter is really bad, yet it is a far cry from invading other nations, as America, England and Russia do all the time.

jachee 8y ago

"Princess" is pretty disingenuous in that it lessens the Emirates' treatment of women as possessions. It's a sad reminder that equality still has a long way to go.

cirgue 8y ago
> "Princess" is pretty disingenuous in that it lessens the Emirates' treatment of women as possessions. In being the daughter of one of the royal family, she is actually a princess in the titular sense. Having lived in the emirates for a few years, princess is a pretty accurate term for how many Emirati women from the several royal families live: lavish material circumstances with close to zero autonomy and very explicit expectations around marriage.
- jachee 8y ago
  Her "title" shouldn't matter. No one deserves to be held captive against their will.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Right, but words have accepted definitions. And she fits the definition of a princess.
    - jachee 8y ago
      A more responsible headline would read "Woman escapes captivity after seven years of planning, kidnapped at gun point on the high seas, hasn't been seen since." Princess-ness has nothing to do with the story except to minimize her humanity.
pessimizer 8y ago
I'm not sure what being royalty has to do with women's rights. You don't need rights to be a princess, just parentage. It's also weird to try to inject wokeness into talk of a princess through feminism when the idea of royalty is a deeply racist institution; I would think you'd take that angle.

iamshs 8y ago

What a gut-wrenching story. Perpetual control over your child seems so suffocating and counter intuitive. So much so that the kid had to plan an operation to escape. More background to the story: 1. India returned the princess to protect strategic interests - https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-returned-runaway-dubai-princess-to-protect-strategic-interests https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-returned-runaway-dubai-pr... 2. http://www.asianage.com/india/all-india/300318/kidnapped-dubai-princess-returns-safely-to-uae-with-indias-help.html http://www.asianage.com/india/all-india/300318/kidnapped-dub... 3. Indian Prime Minister authorized the operation to seize her and return back to UAE - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/28/indias-modi-authorized-capture-of-runaway-dubai-princess-newspaper-claims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/28...

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> India returned the princess to protect strategic interests Why India?! Western Europe, Japan and the United States have strong judicial systems. The EU, in particular, wouldn't require any pre-declarations to be filed prior to claiming asylum. The only advantage to India is being able to disappear, e.g. change names and retire to a remote village. Unfortunately, she doesn't appear to have taken advantage of that.
- breitling 8y ago
  India isn't exactly a multi-cultural melting pot. A foreigner would stand out like a sore thumb. She would be trading one prison for another.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

Rjevski 8y ago

What a fucked up country.

F_r_k 8y ago
List of wrongful convictions in the USA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions... It's not even a full list
- Rjevski 8y ago
  What's your point? One thing is a list of wrongful convictions - failures of the justice system - but what happened here isn't a failure, it's the system working as designed.
  - miracle2k 8y ago
    That is true, it's an important distinction to make. Now, in terms of the design of the criminal justice system, the US does not fare so well either, but we don't really have to debate that here. Still, your comment was unnecessarily ignorant and insulting; presumably there are people for who the UAE is more than the misdeeds of the ruling family; the fact that it isn't to us, is really our failing. Your post just wasn't very helpful.
  - rhacker 8y ago
    What do you mean by working as designed. The founders of the US said, why don't we make sure there are some major bullet holes in this design so we make sure some innocent people go to jail? If it was part of the design, then it was the design, if it was not, it is a defect. Think of software engineering in this case. And his point is that someone reduced the UAE and all its history and people to "what a fucked up country" then it's absolutely relevant. What about the destruction of the indians and native land, the going to war for OIL for the past 20 years and killing basically indiscriminately. Do I need to remind us of slavery? I'm a US citizen, but be prepared to take salt in the face if someone reduces your country to a sentence like that.

baybal2 8y ago

What a messed up former "navy officer." She entrusted nothing less than her life to him, yet he surrendered her without fight. If a man like him ever bothered to even turn off a transponder, let alone prepare for an armed assault.

maeln 8y ago
If he fought, what would have been the result ? He would have been dead and she would still go back to UAE. He made the only logical choice. Life is not a video game.
- amelius 8y ago
  He could have taken her hostage.
- tc313 8y ago
  And he’s already doing a huge favor by helping her escape. Why do people expect him to sacrifice his life for her too?
- baybal2 8y ago
  > He made the only logical choice. That a morally messed up judgement. Hearing something like that again, and again, I long stopped wondering why people in the West come to the situation you have now. Spirit, courage and integrity - you must have them!
readhn 8y ago
Are you serious? Who are you going to fight? Special ops brigade single handed - this is not a movie! Everyone would be shot dead in 3 seconds. if anything - it was a logistics mistake on his part - going to and making contact with Indian authorities (which would extradite back to UAE.) He should have involved professional traffickers - they'd take her anywhere for $400K. Ideally to the closest USA embassy then make some public noise after they got there. If USA was the final destination anyway.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago

panzerboy 8y ago

What shocks me is how can a parent torture (or order somebody to torture) their own children? Don't they love them?

cbluth 8y ago
love? in a royal family?
phs2501 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case Not everyone is good.
Brockenstein 8y ago
You might be surprised what people consider love, and how all sorts of other beliefs get intertwined with it. IE you have strong sacred long held beliefs that your female children are not independent, are your property. That you want the best for them, according to your beliefs and your customs, which you believe are right. That resorting to "tough love" to get wayward children on the right track is for their own good. A lot of folks would claim or deny they're hurting their children, it's their children who are being hurtful by being "disobedient", bringing dishonor, or rejecting the values on which they were raised. The list goes on and on, the rationalizations are enumerable. And even aside all that, some people just love exercising their authority over others and actively seek opportunities to do it to the maximum degree they possibly can. It's pretty easy to rationalize cruelty as love. And everyone is the hero of their own story, so not always a lot of incentive to be objective or introspective about it.
Tuna-Fish 8y ago
In order to develop the kind of relationship with one's children you'd expect, you have to actually spend time with them. Sheikh Al Maktoum has 23 children with 7 different women. At that point, some of them are going to be strangers to you.

YorkshireSeason 8y ago

Disappearing royals are also a ... feature ... of Saudi-Arabia's ruling family, see [1, 2]. It's interesting to speculate why Khashoggi's case garnered so much more attention. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-40926963 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-40926963 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2KYQWPUbG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2KYQWPUbG4

wavefunction 8y ago
Khashoggi came from a powerful and influential family in the KSA, plus he was a journalist for the Washington Post.
- YorkshireSeason 8y ago
  The other princes in the BBC article & video came from an even more powerful and influential family in the KSA.

ArrayList 8y ago

Missing princess? Sounds like a job for an overweight plumber in red shirt and overalls with a great stache.

ptero 8y ago

This is a horrible story indeed and I hope it gets public attention to lessen the hell the princess is going through. It is always easy to be smart after the fact, but to me that the naval officer thought through the escape to getting out of the country, but not what happens next. For him, a French citizen, getting out to a neutral country is the end. For her, a UAE citizen without any right to stay elsewhere, it is at best a midpoint. He could have arranged for news coverage prior to the mission by discreetly talking to some high caliber journalists so they can prep coverage and he could have involved professionals (e.g., traffickers who move refugees and have global networks).

Markoff 8y ago

let's hope we will switch to electric ASAP so these dictatorships won't have any leverage over other countries and they can go back to their camels