Ghislaine Maxwell's siblings take complaints about lack of bail to UN
Ghislaine Maxwell's siblings filed a complaint to the United Nations on Monday, condemning a judge's repeated rejections to grant her bail, NBC reports.
Maxwell's brothers and sisters called her pre-trial detention an act of "unprecedented discrimination" and accused U.S. authorities of crossing the "narrow line between justice and revenge."
They filed a complaint with the U.N.'s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and said that Maxwell has been "presumed guilty, convicted and demonized before any trial," per NBC.
"This is unprecedented discrimination, the like of which has never seen before: All her applications for bail have been rejected, with no regard for the security offered," according to a statement from lawyers for the family Francois Zimeray and Jessica Finelle.
Maxwell, who is accused of aiding Jeffrey Epstein in his sex trafficking of minors, was denied bail for the fifth time in June this year after being deemed a "flight risk."
"It is as if Ghislaine Maxwell is suffering the consequences for the failure of the U.S. Administration to preserve the life of Jeffrey Epstein and secure his appearance at trial," the statement said, per NBC.
Earlier this month, her lawyer claimed that her jail conditions are similar to what fictional character Hannibal Lecter experienced in the 1991 film "The Silence of the Lambs."
Maxwell's attorney Bobbi Sternheim requested that she be released from jail before her trial, in a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan.
The FBI arrested Maxwell in July of last year. She was charged with four counts of conspiring "to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts" during the 1990s as well as two counts of perjury.
She is alleged to have helped traffic young women and underage girls for Epstein, who killed himself in prison in 2019 in New York while awaiting trial.
Maxwell has also been accused of sexually abusing girls as young as 15 and faces an eight-count indictment for her alleged role. She has denied the charges.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment.
