“As these legal proceedings are currently ongoing, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further,” a spokesperson for the force that carried out the arrest said.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who lost his titles as a prince and Duke of York over his connections to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, wants a judicial review to consider the legality of the search warrants.
A court hearing will be held on Thursday afternoon to begin considering this bid to quash the warrants, with the hearing set to begin in private. The judge will initially hear a request by the police to keep some documents private.
The warrants had been issued by a judge at the Central Criminal Court on 18 February – the day before Mountbatten-Windsor had been arrested – and the legal challenge is against the chief constable of Thames Valley Police and the Central Criminal Court.
“Even if Andrew succeeds in having the search warrants quashed, that would not necessarily be the victory it might first appear,” said Nick Vamos, a criminal lawyer at Peters & Peters and former head of special crime at the Crown Prosecution Service.
Vamos said such disputes over warrants were not uncommon – but if the police lost on a technical error, they could still sometimes keep what they had obtained in a search.
“The police can apply back to the Crown Court to retain the material if they have grounds to immediately seize it again,” said Vamos.
It would need to be a more fundamental issue with the granting of the warrants for the police to be required to return the material from a search, he said.
For several days after the arrest, police were seen searching Mountbatten-Windsor’s property at Marsh Farm in Sandringham and at his former home, Royal Lodge, on the Windsor estate.
The arrest, carried out on his 66th birthday, followed a series of revelations from the Epstein files, published by the US Department of Justice.
They included emails appearing to show official documents being shared by Mountbatten-Windsor with Epstein and others, at a time when he was the UK’s trade envoy.
Mountbatten-Windsor had already been stripped of his titles by King Charles, after emails had shown Mountbatten-Windsor had continued his links with Epstein, beyond when he had publicly said those links had been severed.
After Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest in February he was taken to Aylsham police station. A photograph captured his departure later that day, looking exhausted, after he was released under investigation.
The launch of this legal action against the police over the search warrants is the first public pushback from the former prince, who has lost his home, titles and public status, with charities and businesses distancing themselves from him.
Thames Valley Police says its investigation into Mountbatten-Windsor is continuing.
In a previous update it said the force had been “working with the United States Department of Justice to get further information that may be related to this investigation”.
Detectives also highlighted that allegations of sexual misconduct could be considered as part of this inquiry into potential misconduct in public office.
Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied any wrongdoing in his associations with Epstein.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
