ABC News Exclusive: Torture Tape Implicates UAE Royal Sheikh

Sadistic Torture by Sheikh

At another point on the tape, the Sheikh can be seen telling the cameraman to come closer.

A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirate shows a member of the country's royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails.

(ABC)

"Get closer. Get closer. Get closer. Let his suffering show," the Sheikh says.

Over the course of the tape, Sheikh Issa acts in an increasingly sadistic manner.

He uses an electric cattle prod against the man's testicles and inserts it in his anus.

At another point, as the man wails in pain, the Sheikh pours lighter fluid on the man's testicles and sets them aflame.

Then the tape shows the Sheikh sorting through some wooden planks. "I remember there was one that had a nail in it," he says on the tape.

The Sheikh then pulls down the pants of the victim and repeatedly strikes him with board and its protruding nail. At one point, he puts the nail next to the man's buttocks and bangs it through the flesh.

"Where's the salt," asks the Sheikh as he pours a large container of salt on to the man's bleeding wounds.

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The victim pleads for mercy, to no avail.

The final scene on the tape shows the Sheikh positioning his victim on the desert sand and then driving over him repeatedly. A sound of breaking bones can be heard on the tape.

Sheikh Issa's lawyer, Daryl Bristow of Baker Botts in Houston, told ABC News "the tape is the tape."

The torture victim was identified by Nabulsi as an Afghan grain dealer, Mohammed Shah Poor, who the Sheikh accused of short changing on a grain delivery to his royal ranch on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.

The UAE government, in its statement, says the matter was settled privately between the Sheikh and the grain dealer, "by agreeing not to bring formal charges against each other, i.e., theft on the one hand and assault on the other hand."

Nabulsi says Sheikh Issa became increasing violent and sadistic following the 2004 death of his father, the UAE's first and only president until that time, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

"It's like you flipped a switch and the man took a wrong turn in his life and started getting violent," said Nabulsi.

Sheikh Issa is one of the country's 22 royal sheikhs but does not hold an official position in the UAE government.