The Telegraph
The yacht aboard which fleeing Dubai royal Princess Latifa hoped to reach India – and eventually a life of freedom beyond the clutches of her domineering father – was well-equipped for open water sailing. A 29-metre ketch motor sailer captained by a former French intelligence officer, the Nostromo carried an array of advanced communication and navigation aids. Below decks, mobile phones, a laptop computer, VHF radio, radar, automatic identification system transceivers and receivers, a satellite Iridium phone and an internet satellite receiver blinked and flashed as they sent and received signals. One of these devices gave away the location of the vessel, which on the eighth day of its 2018 journey was boarded in international waters off the coast of Goa by Indian and Emirati commandos, who carried Princess Latifa kicking and biting back to her life of gilded seclusion in the UAE. “It was like a military operation,” recalled Tiina Jauhiainen, the Finnish fitness instructor who was aboard the yacht with her friend and now campaigns for her freedom, this week releasing new videos of the princess in captivity saying she feared for her life. The story of Princess Latifa’s escape reads like fiction but how she was caught is equally the stuff of spy novels.