Maxwell treatment is ‘worse than death row’, says family
GHISLAINE MAXWELL’S family has filed a legal claim with the United Nations to investigate the US legal system over her “arbitrary detention” and “dehumanising” treatment worse than “a terrorist on death row”.
Lawyers for Ms Maxwell’s six siblings last night filed a 22-page complaint with the UN, calling for her immediate release on the eve of her trial for alleged child-sex abuse and trafficking crimes.
The legal case accuses US prosecuting authorities of helping to “demonise” Ms Maxwell, 59, by staging a “melodramatic press conference” following her arrest last year so that “she was and remains treated as guilty even though … she has still not been tried”.
It also highlights the “inhumane” conditions of her ongoing detention which have “weakened” her “physically and psychologically”, placing her in a “seriously imbalanced position” to defend herself against the charges.
The legal action claims she was made a “substitute culprit” after Jeffrey Epstein, her then boyfriend, was found hanged in a New York cell. Ms Maxwell was arrested and charged a year later.
Ms Maxwell, according to the claim, remains in isolation in a cell measuring 9ft by 7ft and is “awakened constantly at night” during more than 500 days of detention.
The prison conditions, it goes on, “are a marked attack on her dignity, health, safety and psychological wellbeing”.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is being asked to investigate her detention, which includes being subjected to “up to seven body searches per day” and allegations she has made that she was “touched in a sexually inappropriate manner by corrections officers on multiple occasions”.
She will stand trial next week for allegedly grooming four teenagers for Epstein, charges she denies.
Francois Zimeray, a leading human rights lawyer, is calling on authorities to release Ms Maxwell “without delay”.
Yesterday, a judge ruled that Ms Maxwell can call on Prof Elizabeth Loftus, a false memory expert who has studied memory repression and has used it against sexual assault survivors.