Sheikh Mohammed’s ex-wife Princess Haya granted responsibility for decisions on their children’s medical care and schooling

The ruler of Dubai will have no face-to-face contact with his two children from his marriage to Princess Haya nor any substantive say in their upbringing, after a long-running court battle between the former couple and a series of damning judgments about his “abusive behaviour”.

Concluding more than two and a half years of legal proceedings, which began when Haya fled to the UK with the children in April 2019, the president of the family division of the high court in England and Wales said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum had “consistently displayed coercive and controlling behaviour with respect to those members of his family who he regards as behaving contrary to his will”.

Sheikh Mohammed orchestrated the abductions and confinement of two of his other children, Princess Latifa and Princess Shamsa – in the latter case from the streets of Cambridge – and subjected Haya to a campaign of “harassment and intimidation”.

He hacked the phones of Haya and five of her associates, including two of her lawyers, using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware while the couple were locked in court proceedings.

His agents attempted to buy a £30m estate next door to Haya’s Berkshire home in a “very significant threat to her security”, while publicly denying they were doing so.