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The Arts Intel Report

The Runaway Princesses

In March of 2018, a few miles off the coast of Goa, India, a team of armed commandos boarded a slow-moving yacht under the cover of night. Supported by helicopters in the air and a small fleet of military boats on the water, they emerged minutes later with their prize—32-year-old Latifa, the fugitive daughter of Sheikh Mohammed, the ruler of Dubai. Her disturbing story—complete with dashed escape plans, seedy accomplices, torture, and imprisonment—is told in a new podcast by The New Yorker and In the Dark, the Peabody-award-winning investigative series. Using conversations with Latifa’s friends and U.K. police officers, along with audio recordings from Latifa herself, hosts Heidi Blake and Madeleine Baran reveal a pattern of abuse experienced not just by Latifa, but by several Emirati princesses and women at the hands of Dubai’s most powerful man. —Paulina Prosnitz

Cover art by Malika Favre, courtesy of “The New Yorker”