Nostromo, the vessel that was to take Dubai’s Princess Latifa to safety and freedom, has sunk in Sri Lanka under what the Captain describes as suspicious circumstances.
In 2018, a hopeful Sheikha Latifa Al Maktoum crossed Dubai’s border to Oman and jet-skied out to international waters where she boarded the 100ft yacht, Nostromo, captained by French navy veteran, Hervé Jaubert. “She recorded videos and voice recordings which she WhatsApp’d to me”, reports Crisis Manager Radha Stirling, the CEO of Detained in Dubai who was helping Princess Latifa and Hervé Jaubert when they were aboard the yacht fleeing Dubai. “She told me she had made the daring decision to flee her father, the ruler of Dubai, after years of torture and egregious human rights abuses. She was so relieved to be free, under the stars and the protection of Hervé’s US flagged yacht”
Although Latifa had escaped the jurisdiction of the UAE and should have been safe, her father orchestrated an illegal raid on Nostromo, with the secretly provided support of US personnel and the Indian Coast Guard. “Latifa was texting me during a militarised hostile boarding of Nostromo, telling me she heard gunshots”. Jaubert and his crew were violently beaten by Indian and Emirati special forces operatives, while Latifa was abducted and taken by chopper and plane back to Dubai.
Jaubert and his crew were abducted by Emirati special forces and military and forced onto their ship and to the UAE against international and maritime law. “Nostromo was towed back with Hervé which is how we were able to track their location”.
“We launched a United Nations investigation into the safety of all passengers onboard Nostromo and after a high pressure campaign, the UAE was forced to release Hervé from custody, but Latifa wasn’t so lucky.
“Since her abduction, she has been used in PR campaigns by the ruler, assuring the public that she is safe, while clearly under the kind of duress she described to me in 2018. A palace insider, very close to Latifa, has recently divulged that she is in fact, not safe and continues to suffer a multitude of human rights violations in the Emirates.”
Nostromo was badly damaged by Emirati and Indian special forces during their attack. They deliberately stripped her of all safety gear and looted the vessel. Once a glorious yacht, she now sits at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, perhaps never to be recovered.
Cptn. Hervé Jaubert spoke of his sadness, “I feel extreme sadness to see my boat left to decay for years and sink like a wreck. I lost both my pristine yacht and Latifa in a criminal attack by the UAE and India in international waters. I was betrayed, ignored, abandoned by my own country and secretly renditioned to the UAE. Latifa is still a prisoner, and I am alive thanks to Radha’s media alert”.
“To me, it’s intentional, you can see the air escaping from the hatches, it means somebody opened the hatches, they are normally kept close.”
Stirling adds, “We have discovered that during the assault, US citizens were present and working with the UAE government. It’s no secret that we have continued our investigation into this horrific international incident and quite the coincidence that all remaining forensic evidence is now destroyed”.
Hervé Jaubert had planned the escape with Latifa for seven years. She had trained and prepared and wanted nothing more than her freedom. Jaubert dismisses that there is any possibility that she changed her mind voluntarily. Stirling agrees. “The whole world heard the fear that Princess Haya had when living in the palace and that even she, a powerful woman in her own right, had to secretly flee and seek safety in the UK. I do not believe it is any different for Latifa. It’s extremely sad that Nostromo has sunk or been sunk, that Latifa is still not free and no actor in this crime has faced true accountability.
”The UAE has continued to act lawlessly, including agreeing to extrajudicial extraditions and continues to put people at risk. I commend Hervé Jaubert and Princess Latifa for risking their lives. Latifa had escaped and was legally in international waters. There is no reason that either of them should have considered the UAE would act illegally and abduct them from a US flagged yacht. I encourage whistleblowers from the United States to come forward with their information and we will ensure their anonymity. Some FBI’s agents have already secretly provided intelligence to a media outlet, but there is more to this story. If left ignored, more innocent people will be at risk of extrajudicial abduction, torture and execution”.
