The ex-wife of a Dubai prince and her three children have been “abducted” by Emirati police in an early morning raid on their home, her British human rights lawyer has claimed — the latest development in an explosive custody battle that he says has subjected the mother to years of systematic abuse, threats and a travel ban that left her effectively imprisoned in her own home.
Zeynab Javadli, 34, had been locked in a bitter dispute with the family of Sheikh Saeed, 49, since their divorce in 2019. Her lawyer David Haigh says she was ambushed in the early hours of 2 June, with Emirati police entering her Dubai home and removing her and her three daughters by force. By the time her mother returned to the property — having been detained at Dubai airport upon arrival back in the country — the locks had been changed and the home was empty.
In a statement shared with The Sun, Haigh said: “Zeynab’s home in Dubai has now been confirmed as locked and empty. This was not unexpected. From the moment of her divorce from the ruler’s nephew in 2019, Zeynab was subjected to horrific and unrelenting abuses: attacks on her home, threats of arrest, and a travel ban that made her, in every meaningful sense, a hostage in her own home.”
Haigh described the nature of the abuse Javadli had allegedly endured as sustained and deliberate. “Hidden from the world’s view, behind closed doors, she has endured a daily existence of the most extreme and systematic abuse, directed not only at her, but at her elderly parents and her three young daughters. These were not isolated incidents. They were relentless. They were deliberate. And they were carried out with total impunity by the authorities of Dubai and its powerful ruling family.”
Two months before the raid, Javadli had been ordered to hand over the children to Sheikh Saeed’s family and warned she faced “coercive force” unless she abandoned her custody bid. She had previously live-streamed a police raid on her home, which Haigh described as a “desperate, real-time plea for international help.” He said she had also recently shielded her eldest daughter from what he described as the prospect of underage marriage.
“She is the bravest, most courageous human being I have ever known, and the most devoted mother I have ever witnessed,” Haigh told The Sun. “Her daughters are her entire world. Those three girls are princesses of Dubai’s ruling family. If this is how Dubai treats its own, imagine how it treats everyone else.” He added starkly: “In Dubai, women and children are routinely served up on a gold platter to the most powerful sheikh, the most influential Emirati, or the wealthiest businessman. Zeynab’s case is yet further evidence that women and children in Dubai are simply not safe. They are treated as possessions, not as human beings with rights.”
In a detail that Haigh described as deeply ironic, Javadli’s home was located next door to the villa where Princess Latifa, the Emirati royal who made international headlines when she attempted to flee the UAE in 2018, is said to reside under constant police monitoring. Latifa was forcibly returned to Dubai by armed commandos after being intercepted on a yacht off the coast of India, and in 2021 released a secret video to friends in which she said: “I’m a hostage, I’m not free. I am imprisoned in this jail. My life is not in my hands.” She was filmed crouched against a bathroom wall, recording the message on a mobile phone. A subsequent #FreeLatifa campaign lasting three and a half years came to an end in August 2021 after she was photographed in public in Dubai, Spain and Iceland.
