LONDON -- Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum ordered the phones of his ex-wife and her lawyers to be hacked as part of a "sustained campaign of intimidation and threat" during the custody battle over their children, England's High Court has ruled.
"The findings represent a total abuse of trust, and indeed an abuse of power to a significant extent," Judge Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division in England and Wales, said in his ruling."I have always denied the allegations made against me and I continue to do so," he said in a statement.
The activity came to light in August last year after Shackleton was urgently tipped off by Cherie Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that she and Haya had been hacked, the court was told.At the same time a cyber expert from the University of Toronto's internet watchdog Citizen Lab, which researches digital surveillance, also alerted Haya's lawyers after tracking the hacking, the court heard.
The legal costs of the case have run into millions of pounds, with the case involving some of Britain's most prominent lawyers. The costs of one appeal alone was cited by the court as costing 2.5 million pounds. He concluded the sheik had arranged for his daughter Shamsa, then aged 18, to be kidnapped in 2000 off the streets of Cambridge in central England and flown back to Dubai.
"He has harassed and intimidated the mother both before her departure to England and since. He is prepared to countenance those acting on his behalf doing so unlawfully within the UK."Haya's lawyers told the court that the British Foreign Office had been made aware of the hacking allegations, and police had expressed a desire to interview Haya and her lawyers as victims. Reuters was unable to establish if this took place.
McFarlane dismissed those suggestions, saying the idea it could be Jordan was "so insubstantial as to be without consequence" and was critical of how the sheik had instructed his lawyers to act on his behalf.
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