Hyderabad: Dubai ruler and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was confronted by a man protesting against the West Asian country’s alleged role in the Sudan conflict while walking through central London, according to a video circulated on social media.
The footage, posted on Sunday, August 9, shows a man of Sudanese origin shouting across the road at Sheikh Mohammed and his entourage in the affluent Knightsbridge area. “Emiratis and UAE, they’re killing Sudanese people,” he shouts, demanding that the killing in his country stop.
A man who appears to be Emirati and part of Sheikh Mohammed’s group is then seen responding with obscenities and a racial slur, telling the protester “f*** you and f*** your people” and calling him a “motherf***er, Black b****,” according to the video.
When the protester asks, “You said Black?,” the man tells him to shut up and crosses the road towards him. The protester continues shouting that the UAE is killing Sudanese people, naming UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
UAE denies role in Sudan conflict
The UAE has consistently denied allegations that it supports Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been accused by the UN and the US of committing genocide during the war that began in April 2023. UN experts and human rights groups have documented alleged arms transfers to the RSF facilitated by networks based in Libya, Chad and the breakaway region of Somaliland.
Western governments, including the UK, have faced criticism from campaigners for not publicly opposing alleged Emirati involvement in the conflict, which has triggered one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.
Figures close to the Emirati leadership have recently appeared to tacitly acknowledge long-standing support for the RSF and its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who owns property in Dubai through a network of shell companies.
Following the RSF’s capture of el-Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, the paramilitary was accused of executing, raping and extorting thousands of civilians in a campaign the UN said bore all the hallmarks of genocide.
Earlier UK court rulings
Sheikh Mohammed has previously been the subject of adverse findings in British courts. In 2020, a London judge ruled that he had organised the abduction of his daughters Latifa, who attempted to flee Dubai in 2018, and Shamsa, who briefly escaped her family in the UK in 2000.
The following year, a senior High Court judge found that he had authorised the hacking of the phone of his former wife, Jordan’s Princess Haya, and five of her associates using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.
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