Ghislaine’s treatment is inhuman, says brother denied prison visit

GHISLAINE MAXWELL’S brother was barred from seeing his sister in jail despite making a 3,000-mile trip for an arranged visit.

Ian Maxwell was turned away from the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn on Wednesday. He had flown from London after agreeing the visit with prison authorities.

Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, the daughter of the late media tycoon Robert Maxwell, will be sentenced on June 28 and faces a maximum 55 years in prison after being convicted at the end of December on sex-trafficking charges.

Mr Maxwell said he was “not holding his breath” over the sentence handed down to his sister.

Only after sentencing can Ghislaine Maxwell launch an appeal against the conviction. She will also make an application to US authorities that she be returned to the UK to serve her sentence.

Maxwell’s family believe the socialite, a close friend of the Duke of York and former girlfriend of the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has been subjected to inhumane treatment after spending almost two years in solitary confinement.

Mr Maxwell arrived at the Brooklyn prison only to be told it was in lockdown over an incident in the male wing of the jail and that the visit was off. The meeting, due to take place at 12.30pm, would have been their first in more than two years following Maxwell’s arrest in the US in July 2020.

She has been in detention ever since and had only recently been moved into the general prison population that allows social visits.

Mr Maxwell, 65, said: “I flew to New York on Tuesday, stayed the night in Brooklyn and then walked to the prison on Wednesday only to discover that the whole prison was in lockdown that had been imposed a few hours earlier.”

Mr Maxwell spoke to officials and explained he had flown 3,000 miles and pleaded with them to “make this visit happen”. “The official put a call into the legal office and they said ‘no’,” recalled Mr Maxwell. He added: “If I had flown from the moon it would not have made any difference.”

The refusal to allow Mr Maxwell to visit his sister means she has had one family visit since she was found guilty of grooming and procuring underage girls for Epstein, a financier, who was found hanged in his prison cell a year before Maxwell was arrested.

“In two years this girl [Maxwell] has had one family visit,” said Mr Maxwell, “It is unreal. It is really horrible.

“It is inhuman. For me it’s just tiring. I flew 6,000 miles for no reason. But for her it’s just terrible.”