LONDON: The removal of Prince Andrew’s royal title following further revelations about his ties to US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “vindicates” his alleged sexual assault victim, her family has said.
Andrew, 65, on Friday renounced his Duke of York title under pressure from his brother King Charles III, who wants to draw a line under the scandal that has embarrassed Britain’s royal family.
Speaking to the BBC, the brother of Virginia Giuffre, whom Andrew denies assaulting when she was 17, said his late sister “would be very proud” of the development.
“We have shed a lot of happy and sad tears today,” he told the broadcaster late on Friday.
“I think happy because in a lot of ways this vindicates Virginia. All the years of work that she put in is now coming to some sort of justice,” he added.
Andrew, who stepped back from public life in 2019 amid the Epstein scandal, will remain a prince, as he is the second son of the late queen Elizabeth II.
He has become a source of deep embarrassment for his brother Charles, following a 2019 television interview in which he defended his friendship with Epstein.
In the interview, Andrew vowed he had cut ties in 2010 with Epstein, who was disgraced after Giuffre accused him of using her as a sex slave.
But in a reported exchange that emerged in UK media this week, Andrew told the convicted sex offender in 2011 that they were “in this together” when a photo of the prince with his arm around Giuffre was published.
He added the two would “play together soon.”
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.
Giuffre, a US and Australian citizen, took her own life at her farm in Western Australia on April 25.
New allegations emerged this week in her posthumous memoir in which she wrote that Andrew had behaved as if having sex with her was his “birthright.”
In “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice,” to be published next week, Giuffre wrote she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions, including when she was under 18.
Andrew has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s accusations and avoided a trial in a civil lawsuit by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.
The once-popular royal, who was hailed a hero when he flew as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot during the 1982 Falklands War, was stripped of his military titles in 2022.
Alleged victim’s family hails renunciation of Prince Andrew’s royal title
https://arab.news/87e62
Alleged victim’s family hails renunciation of Prince Andrew’s royal title
- The removal of Prince Andrew’s royal title following further revelations about his ties to US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “vindicates” his alleged sexual assault victim, her family has said
Neighbors of alleged Bondi gunmen shocked by deadly rampage
- Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram
SYDNEY: Like many people in Sydney, Glenn Nelson spent his Sunday evening watching television coverage of a deadly shooting on the city’s iconic Bondi Beach.
But stepping onto his front porch, flanked by neatly trimmed box hedges, he saw armed police cordoning off the street before raiding the house opposite — home of the two suspects who are alleged to have killed 15 people in Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll catch the rest in the morning,’ the next thing, the drama is out the front door,” he said in an interview on Monday, shortly after mowing his lawn.
Nelson and other neighbors said the family living across the street kept to themselves, but seemed like any other in the suburb of Bonnyrigg, a working-class, well-kept enclave with an ethnically diverse population around 36 km (22 miles) by road from Sydney’s central business district.
Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Police have not named the suspects, but they said the older man, 50, was killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital.
Police said the son was known to authorities and the father had a firearms license.
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Sunday evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects.
She said the two men had told her they were going on a fishing trip before heading to Bondi and opening fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“I always see the man and the woman and the son,” said 66-year-old Lemanatua Fatu, who lives across the street.
“They are normal people.”
Until Sunday’s shooting, Bonnyrigg was an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood typical of Sydney’s sprawling Western suburbs.
It has significant Vietnamese and Chinese communities, along with many residents who were born in Iraq, Cambodia and Laos, according to government data.
The town center, a strip mall with a large adjoining car park, is flanked by a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several churches.
“It’s a quiet area, very quiet,” Fatu said. “And people mind their own business, doing their own thing — until now.”
Not much is currently known about the suspects’ backgrounds.
A Facebook post from an Arabic and Qur'an studies institute appearing to show one of the men was removed on Monday and no one answered the door at an address listed for it in the neighboring suburb of Heckenberg.
On Monday afternoon, as police took down their cordon, several people re-entered the house, covering their faces. They made no comment to the media and did not answer the door.
