The UK police statement on Thursday morning was blunt. As part of an investigation, it said, “we have today arrested a man in his sixties from Norfolk.”
While the statement did not name the man who had been arrested, the police knew that they could not keep a lid on this one. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Britain’s former prince, is being investigated in relation to allegations of misconduct in public office. He was released “under investigation” after almost 12 hours of questioning on Thursday night.
Though the police did not go into detail, the release of documents from the files of Jeffrey Epstein suggested that Mountbatten-Windsor, in his role as a UK trade envoy, had shared confidential official information with the convicted sex offender. The family of the late Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent Epstein victims, who alleged she had been sexually trafficked to the former prince, welcomed the arrest.
Mountbatten-Windsor has denied any wrongdoing. He was stripped of his title last October and moved out of the Windsor estate. This was a long overdue distancing for Britain’s royal family from the former prince in what is a hugely damaging episode for them.
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British king Charles III said on Thursday he learned of the arrest with “the deepest concern” and that Buckingham Palace would co-operate with the investigation. But the first arrest of a British royal since Charles I in 1647 moves this crisis to a new level.
The long reach of the files is increasingly evident in damaged reputations, resignations and questioning of links with Epstein revealed in extensive emails published in the latest batch of documents. What police actions will follow will take time to emerge, of course. But it is vital for victims and their families that there is legal accountability where criminal acts were committed.
The files reveal a deeply evil scheme of sex trafficking and abuse undertaken by powerful men, with Epstein at its centre. The way forward, as the British king himself put it on Thursday, is that “the law must take its course”.
