Mohammed bin Rashid fears the expansion of the scandal of his conflict with his fleeing wife
The ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum fears the expansion of the scandal of his legal dispute with his wife fleeing to Europe, Jordanian Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein.
Bin Rashid, 70, has launched an appeal to prevent the publication of two rulings in a court battle in a British court with his ex-wife over their two children.
The child custody battle began last May, and several sessions of the Supreme Court in London were held in front of Andrew MacFarlane, head of the Family Affairs Department, and the sessions were private.
On Wednesday, the court heard bin Rashid’s appeal to publish two previous rulings by MacFarlane, who decided last month that the two judgments should be announced.
Princess Haya, 45, the daughter of King Hussein of the late Jordan, and the court-appointed guardian of the children supported publishing the rulings.
“This lawsuit resulted from custody procedures in the Supreme Court relating to the children and they are now within the jurisdiction of the court,” said Judge Nicholas Underhill, Vice-President of the Court of Appeal.
He added that the two provisions “raise two issues related to the public interest that go beyond the question of custody procedures.”
“The first relates to some of the disputed issues related to facts, and the second relates to issues that resulted from the father’s special status as the ruler of a foreign country.”
The two parties said in a statement last July that the issue was not related to divorce or financial problems, but was limited to caring for the children.
Bin Rashid asked the court to return his children to Dubai, while Princess Haya asked the court to protect her daughter from being forced to marry and to issue a non-exposure order.
Underhill said that custody procedures were still underway and a “care” session would be held at the end of next month.
Bin Rashid had more than 20 sons with different wives and married the princess in 2004 in what was believed to be his sixth marriage.
Princess Haya, the half-sister of Jordan’s King Abdullah, attended a session yesterday, Wednesday, while bin Rashid did not attend nor did he attend any of the previous sessions.
Last summer, the Jordanian princess left Dubai first for Germany, and then to the United Kingdom, and she lives under strict security protection in a house behind Buckingham walls, and filed for a divorce in London, in exchange for another lawsuit filed by the ruler of Dubai, requesting custody of the children.
