EX WIFE OF DUBAI PRINCE MISSING

ZEYNAB JAVADLI AND HER THREE YOUNG PRINCESS CHILDREN ARE MISSING IN DUBAI

4 June 2026 – 9am

I am issuing this statement with grave and urgent concern for the safety and whereabouts of Zeynab Javadli, the Azerbaijani world championship athlete and former wife of Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, nephew of Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Zeynab was last in contact yesterday evening. Since then, all communication has ceased. Numerous friends and family members have contacted me, and not one of them has been able to reach her.

Zeynab's home in Dubai has now been confirmed as locked and empty.

In a further deeply alarming development, Zeynab's elderly mother travelled to Dubai today to support her daughter and grandchildren. She was initially detained at Dubai Airport but has since been permitted to enter the country. However, she is unable to leave Dubai, and when she attempted to reach the family home, provided by Sheikh Mohammed, she found the locks had been changed. Her daughter and grandchildren are not inside.

Zeynab had appointed leading King's Counsel Rodney Dixon to represent her before the United Nations. We will now be urgently pressing the United Nations for immediate intervention and the protection of Zeynab and her three young children.

I have stood by Zeynab's side for many years. Whilst we always hoped, desperately hoped, that she would be allowed to live in peace with her children in Dubai, we also knew the day might come when she disappeared, abducted by the Dubai authorities and taken hostage like so many women in Dubai's royal family before her. We made plans for that day. That day is today.

What too few people understand is the life Zeynab has actually been living. 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.

I spoke with Zeynab many times each day for years. She never stopped fighting for her rights as a woman and as a mother. She never stopped protecting her girls, most recently shielding her eldest daughter from 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. 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.

I believe that Dubai Police, UAE state security, and forces acting on the direct orders of ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum attacked Zeynab's home in the middle of the night on Tuesday 2nd June 2026 and took her and her young children. 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. When Dubai Police last attacked her home, she livestreamed it to the world, a desperate, real-time plea for international help. Today, that plea must be answered.

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.

The cases of Sheikha Latifa, Sheikha Shamsa, Princess Haya, and now Zeynab and her young daughters, Sheikha Sana, Sheikha Asiya, and Sheikha Salma, lay bare the brutal truth that Dubai so desperately tries to conceal. The systematic abuse of women and girls behind that carefully curated, glittering facade is no longer a secret. It is indisputable.

Zeynab's case is further evidence of a pattern that is now indisputable. The systematic abuse of women in Dubai, once a closely guarded secret, is plain for the world to see: women abducted, held hostage, silenced. The cases of Sheikha Latifa, Sheikha Shamsa, Sheikha Bouchra, Princess Haya, and now Zeynab and her young daughters, Sheikha Sana, Sheikha Asiya, and Sheikha Salma, lay bare the brutal truth that Dubai so desperately tries to conceal behind expensive PR firms, paid celebrities, and influencers.

Zeynab's case also exposes a systemic injustice that runs deeper still. Expatriates have never stood a chance of receiving justice in Dubai when pitted against a sheikh or a powerful local figure. They become helpless victims of a justice system that is routinely weaponised by the elite against the vulnerable.

To any mother anywhere in the world who has ever held her child and felt the primal terror of losing them: I am asking you to feel that now for Zeynab. Because that terror is Zeynab's reality today. And it has been her reality every single day.

This situation bears a deeply troubling resemblance to events almost five years ago, when my communications were cut off with Dubai's Princess Latifa. Princess Latifa had been attacked and taken hostage by forces acting for the same ruler. Her case drew international condemnation. Years of campaigning followed before any accountability was sought. We cannot allow history to repeat itself. Not again. Not with three young children at stake.

It is a detail that cannot be overlooked: Zeynab's home was situated very close to the residence where Princess Latifa is currently living, under police watch. The proximity is not lost on us. These women's lives, their suffering, and their struggle for freedom have unfolded in the same shadow, under the same ruler, with the same impunity.

I am calling urgently on the international community, the media, human rights organisations, the worldwide athletic community (Zeynab is a former elite international champion gymnast), and the Azerbaijani Government to act immediately and use every avenue available to demand confirmation of Zeynab's whereabouts and welfare.

But above all, I am speaking directly to every individual reading these words.

To every mother: imagine your daughter taken from you in the middle of the night. Imagine being an elderly woman, flying across the world to reach your child and grandchildren, only to be detained on arrival and forbidden from leaving. That is Zeynab's mother today. That is real. That is happening now.

To every daughter: Zeynab's three little girls, Sheikha Sana, Sheikha Asiya, and Sheikha Salma, may not know tonight where their mother is. They need the world to speak for them, because right now, they cannot speak for themselves.

To every person with a platform, a voice, or a conscience: share this. Post this. Demand answers. Tag your government. Contact the Azerbaijani Consulate in Dubai. Write to your MP or representative. Contact your local media. Do not look away. In cases like this, silence is complicity and noise saves lives.

This is the real Dubai. This is how Dubai treats women and children.

Instagram: @zeynabismyname X: @zeynabJavadli

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david@davidhaigh.co.uk

press@dubaiwatch.org

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