Andrew should be interviewed by police, former PM Gordon Brown says

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AFP via Getty Images Close crop of Gordon Brown outdoorsAFP via Getty Images

The Metropolitan Police should interview Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and "urgently" re-examine its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's victims possibly being trafficked in and out of the UK, former prime minister Gordon Brown has said.

In December, a BBC investigation found 87 flights linked to the convicted sex offender had arrived or departed from UK airports between the early 1990s and 2018, some with British women on board who say they were abused by Epstein.

The BBC has approached Andrew for comment to Brown's article. He has previously denied any wrongdoing in his associations with Epstein.

Brown said he had spent the last week looking at the Epstein files, the documents relating to the disgraced financier released by the US Department of Justice.

"What I discovered about the abuse of women by male predators and their enablers - and Britain's as yet unacknowledged role - has shocked me to the core," he said.

"It demands an in-depth police investigation, and is by far the biggest scandal of all."

Referring to the BBC investigation into Epstein's private planes arriving and departing from UK airports, he wrote that women "were transferred from one Epstein plane to another".

A number of logs for his planes identified women on board only as unnamed "females".

"It seems the authorities never knew what was happening," he said, adding that many of the male passengers are unknown because their names were withheld.

"In short, British authorities had little or no idea who was being trafficked through our country, and for whom other than Epstein."

Brown adds: "I have asked the Met urgently to re-examine their decision-making in their investigation and the subsequent reviews.

"Even women who have been mentioned in the Epstein files, whose names should have been requested months ago from the US Department of Justice, do not appear to have been contacted by British investigators."

"I have been told privately that the investigations related to the former Prince Andrew did not properly check vital evidence of flights.

"I have asked the police to look at this as part of the new inquiry."

He added that Stansted Airport was one of the airports "where women were transferred from one Epstein plane to another".

"The Stansted revelations alone require them to interview Andrew," Brown said.

Last year, US lawyers representing hundreds of Epstein's victims told the BBC it was "shocking" that there has never been a "full-scale UK investigation" into his activities on the other side of the Atlantic.

One of the British woman who testified against Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell - who is known as Kate - was listed as having been on more than 10 flights paid for by Epstein in and out of the UK between 1999 and 2006.

Her lawyer Brad Edwards told the BBC she has never been contacted by UK police.

"A UK police investigation into Kate's plight could reveal Epstein's enablers in Britain, and might also discover whether his friends protected him from a UK investigation," Brown said.

On Wednesday, police in the UK said they were continuing to assess allegations of Epstein having sent a second woman to the UK for sex with Andrew in Windsor in 2010.

"We are assessing the information and following established procedures to seek further information with law enforcement partners in the United States," a Thames Valley Police spokesperson said.

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