Human rights abuses cut little ice with holidaymakers who rush to the beach

How many abducted and imprisoned princesses would it take for British tourists to turn their backs on Dubai? Three? Four? Ten? Because two “disappeared” princesses doesn’t look like being enough, even now that a secretly filmed account by one of them, saying she had been captured, assaulted, drugged and repatriated, has appeared on the BBC – corroborating the fact-finding judgment of a UK judge, published a year ago.

Sir Andrew McFarlane accepted, following claims by lawyers for Princess Haya, a fugitive ex-wife of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum of Dubai, vice-president of the UAE, that his daughters Latifa and Shamsa had both been forcibly returned to Dubai after escaping in 2018 and 2000 respectively. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, it emerged, was withholding information that might shed light on Shamsa’s rendition from the UK.

In May’s case it was careless, at best, when she visited Dubai, to have overlooked Latifa’s 2018 video

Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab agreed the videos were a cause for concern, albeit not enough to warrant sanctions

Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist

This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.