London, March 14: An aide to United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum's family was fired after refusing to spy on a dignitary suspected of conducting an affair at one of their British palaces, a court has heard.
Ejil Mohammed Ali claims he was a "trusted servant of the royal family", working for UK Mission Enterprises Ltd - a company which provides logistics exclusively for the royal family, reports the Telegraph. He alleges that in June 2009 he was summoned to a meeting with the firm's managing director Abdulla Shakeri, and Abdullah Al-Mansoori, a diplomat for the UAE. He claims that the pair asked him to exploit his "privileged access" at the palace to spy on a dignitary they suspected of having an affair with a personal aide several years their junior. As a sweetener, he was offered the chance to buy Al-Mansoori's 15,000 pounds convertible BMW car for just 1,000 pounds, the tribunal was told. "They suspected that [the dignitary] was having an affair with [a] personal assistant and wanted me to find out the truth for them.They wanted me to spy on [them] when [they] were visiting Longcross," Ali said. He claims that when he refused, he was bullied, harassed and eventually dismissed from his 60,000 pound-a-year job. He claims he was suspended in September 2009 and sacked four months later following a "sham dismissal process" in which he was accused of racism, theft, Islamic extremism, and threats to kill colleagues.
