Wikipedia Draft:Randa bint Mohammed Al-Banna

Randa al-Banna met Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prince of Dubai, in 1972 at a party in Beirut. She was just 16 at the time, having recently left her convent school in the city. The Paris of the Mediterranean was how Beirut was known in the early 1970s

Sheikha Randa Al Banna, the first wife of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the vice president of the United Arab Emirates. Randa Al Banna is the mother of the eldest child of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, HRH Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. She is married to the Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE HRH Mansour bin Zayed Al Nayhan the chairman of Manchester City Football Club in the UK.

Dubai was a little-known desert kingdom Randa al-Banna knew nothing about. The young 23-year-old Sheikh Maktoum pursued her and they were quickly married, whereon they embarked on a champagne lifestyle of private jets and exotic locations. In the early days, they were regularly seen at the world’s hottest venues and nightclubs. It would last only a short while.

The marriage to Dubai’s ruler was a short-lived affair. Randa al-Banna had to flee and returned penniless to Beirut without her only child, a daughter born to Maktoum, whom she named Manal and has not seen for forty years. Her life has been shrouded in mystery, due to her divorcing Sheik Mohammed in 1976.

The very public divorce in the UK involving Maktoum and his sixth wife, Princess Haya, along with the now found to be fact by the UK High Courts, of the kidnapping and ongoing illegal detention of two of his daughters from other marriage, Sheikha Latifa and Sheikha Shamsa, Randa al-Banna has finally decided to break her silence. However, she lives in fear of reprisals by the Maktoum’s, to herself and, more importantly, her other children from later marriages.

Sheikha Randa Al Banna is a Lebanese national

Second Marriage
Following the divorce from she married a Lebanese arms dealer. Shortly after her return to Beirut, she was abducted and forced into a marriage by a fighter in the Lebanese civil war. This was a brutal and frightening period in her life, but she still produced two children from the relationship. She lived in constant fear during the conflict and from her husband, a jealous and dangerous man. She finally freed herself from him when she denounced him to the authorities in 1990 at the end of the civil war.

Causes
Randa Al Banna broke four decades of silence about her relationship with the Dubai ruler in an interview with the Sunday Times. Randa Al Banna publicly supported British human rights lawyer David Haigh, His UK based NGO Detained International and Tiina Jauhiainen the FreeLatifa campaign and called for her former husband Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to immediately release her stepdaughter Sheikha Latifa Al Maktoum from Dubai. Randa spoke of the abuse she suffered and witnessed by the Dubai ruler.

Children
Her oldest daughter is Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (Arabic: منال بنت محمد بن راشد آل مكتوم‎) (born 12 November 1977), is a United Arab Emirati politician and member of the ruling family of Dubai. She is most popularly known as the President of Dubai Women Establishment. She is the eldest child of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and is married to Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the younger half-brother of the current ruler of Abu Dhabi Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.