A court case in London is expected to lay bare the reality of life in the UAE. “Discover all that’s possible”, urges the official Dubai tourist website, encouraging visitors to escape to the city state for a sun-soaked holiday

When the glamorous, estranged, 46-year-old Princess Haya of Dubai quickly retreated, not to the welcoming bosom of her Jordan­ian family but straight to the British courts to try to keep custody of her children, a harsh spotlight was firmly beamed onto the patriarchal societies of the Middle East. For more than a decade, Haya used…

An ongoing international custody battle between Dubai’s ruler and one of his wives has undermined the deliberately cultivated image of the city as a playground for Western tourists that embraces modern sensibilities in an overwhelmingly conservative part of the world. For many outside the Middle East, Dubai has developed a reputation as a glitzy, cosmopolitan…

The billionaire ruler of Dubai and his sixth wife are locked in a matrimonial dispute in a London courtroom that could tear apart one of the Middle East’s most powerful families and cause political fallout across the region. Princess Haya bint al-Hussein left the royal palace in Dubai for Germany last month and then headed…