Sheikh Mohammed: disturbing glimpses beneath a refined public image

Dubai ruler cultivates an image as a business visionary and poet, but haunting videos and court rulings offer a shadow biography

Three or four times each night, the child would rise from bed in sharp pain. Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the future ruler of Dubai, seemed to be the only one in the desert encampment so frequently awakened by scorpion bites.

He soon learned it was no coincidence. A tribal elder had been scattering the arachnids in the eight-year-old boy's bed. It was both a lesson in desert survival - check your sleeping quarters for insects every night - and an inoculation. To this day, Sheikh Mohammed claims he is immune to scorpion venom.