Als eerst, wie is Jeffrey Epstein...
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Jeffrey Edward Epstein (New York, 20 januari 1953 - aldaar, 10 augustus 2019) was een Amerikaanse financier, miljardair en veroordeeld zedendelinquent. Hij was handelaar bij Bear Stearns voordat hij zijn eigen firma begon, J. Epstein and Co., later Financial Trust Co. geheten. Hij zou alleen miljardairs als klanten hebben. Zijn vermogen wordt geschat op 2 miljard dollar.
Rechtszaken wegens seksueel misbruik In 2006 werd voor de eerste maal een rechtszaak tegen Epstein gestart: hij zou zeker veertig minderjarige meisjes hebben betaald voor seks. Nadat hij in 2008 een deal met de aanklagers had gesloten werd hij uiteindelijk voor één zaak berecht en wegens het uitlokken van betaalde seks met een 14-jarig meisje veroordeeld tot 18 maanden gevangenisstraf, waarvan hij 13 maanden uitzat in huisarrest. Met veel van zijn (vermeende) slachtoffers heeft Epstein – die na zijn veroordeling officieel als zedendelinquent geregistreerd staat – sindsdien zonder tussenkomst van de rechter een regeling getroffen.[1] Nadat de Miami Herald eind 2018 artikelen over zijn misbruikverleden publiceerde zou Epstein 350.000 dollar hebben betaald aan twee personen, mogelijk om ze als getuigen te beïnvloeden.[2]
Hernieuwde arrestatie en zelfmoordBegin juli 2019 werd hij opnieuw aangehouden op verdenking van mensenhandel en daarnaast ook het seksueel misbruiken van minderjarige meisjes tussen 2002 en 2005.[3] In zijn huis werd ook een grote hoeveelheid naaktfoto's, verspreid over meerdere kamers, van mogelijk minderjarige meisjes aangetroffen.[4]
Op 10 augustus 2019 pleegde hij zelfmoord door zich op te hangen in zijn cel terwijl hij in voorarrest zat in het Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. Eind juli probeerde hij ook al zelfmoord te plegen maar werd bewusteloos aangetroffen. Het is niet bekend of hij hierna onder verscherpt toezicht werd gehouden.[5]
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Hieronder staan 2 artikelen die betrekking hebben op de mogelijke zelfmoord van Epstein en de omstandigheden ervan:
Artikel #1 Why Wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein on Suicide Watch When He Died?Aug. 10, 2019
Prison officials took the disgraced financier off a suicide watch 12 days before he hanged himself in his cell.
Like all federal prisons, the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan has a suicide prevention program designed for inmates who are at risk of taking their own lives.
After an apparent attempt three weeks ago, Jeffrey Epstein — the financier who was at the facility awaiting trial on charges he sexually abused dozens of girls — was placed on suicide watch and received daily psychiatric evaluations, a person familiar with his detention said.
But just six days later, on July 29, Mr. Epstein, 66, was taken off the watch for reasons that remained unclear on Saturday, the person said. Twelve days after that, he hanged himself. Guards making their morning rounds discovered his body at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, the Bureau of Prisons said.
Mr. Epstein’s suicide, coming shortly after prison officials in Manhattan deemed he was no longer at risk of taking his own life, raises questions about the steps prison officials took to keep him alive and ensure he would face his accusers in court.
The Justice Department immediately faced a backlash from elected officials and the public. Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska on the Senate’s Judiciary committee, said in a letter to the Justice Department that it was inexcusable that Mr. Epstein had not been under a 24-hour watch. “These victims deserved to face their serial abuser in court,” he wrote.
Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement that he “was appalled to learn” about Mr. Epstein’s death in federal custody, and had asked the inspector general for the Justice Department to open an investigation into how it happened.
“Mr. Epstein’s death raises serious questions that must be answered,” he said. “In addition to the F.B.I.’s investigation, I have consulted with the Inspector General, who is opening an investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Epstein’s death.”
The federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to requests for information about its decision that Mr. Epstein was no longer a suicide risk. The Metropolitan Correctional Center houses about 800 people awaiting either trial or sentencing in New York City, and over the years its inmates have included high-profile terrorists, white-collar criminals and organized crime figures.
Mr. Epstein had been held there since his arrest on July 6 on federal charges that he sexually abused and trafficked girls in the early 2000s. Judge Richard M. Berman of Federal District Court had denied him bail, rejecting his request to be detained at his Upper East Side mansion as he awaited trial.
One federal prison official with knowledge of the incident confirmed Mr. Epstein had been taken off suicide watch recently and was being held alone in a cell in a special housing unit. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired, said guards found Mr. Epstein in an otherwise empty cell during morning rounds. He had hanged himself and he appeared to be dead.
It would have been extremely difficult for Mr. Epstein to harm himself had he still been on suicide watch, a second prison official said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of dismissal.
Inmates on suicide watch are generally placed in a special observation cell, surrounded with windows, with a bolted down bed and no bedclothes, the official said. A correction officer — or sometimes a fellow inmate trained to be a “suicide companion” — is typically assigned to sit in an adjacent office and monitor the inmate constantly.
Robert Gangi, an expert on prisons and the former executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, said guards also generally take shoelaces and belts away from people on suicide watch. “It's virtually impossible to kill yourself,” Mr. Gangi said.
Inmates can only be removed from the watch when the program coordinator, who is generally the chief psychologist at the facility, deems they are no longer at imminent risk for suicide, according a 2007 Bureau of Prison document outlining suicide prevention policies. The inmates cannot be removed from the watch without a face-to-face psychological evaluation.
To take an inmate off suicide watch, a “post-watch report” needs to be completed, which includes an analysis of how the inmate’s circumstances have changed and why that merits removal from the watch, the document said.
Under Bureau of Prison regulations, the government’s jails and prisons must have one or more rooms designed for housing an inmate on suicide watch, and the rooms must allow staff members to control the inmate without compromising their ability to observe and protect him. Every prison facility is required to have a suicide prevention program.
Suicide prevention cells must provide an “unobstructed view of the inmate” and “may not have fixtures or architectural features that would easily allow self-injury,” according to a Bureau of Prisons policy.
The prison or jail staff members are supposed to operate in shifts to keep the inmate under constant observation and to keep a log of the person’s behavior, according to federal regulations. The inmate is only supposed to be removed from the watch when he or she “is no longer at imminent risk for suicide,” the regulations say.
On July 23, Mr. Epstein was lying unconscious in a cell he shared with another inmate, with bruises on his neck. Law enforcement officials at the time said his injuries were not serious, but the incident was investigated as a possible suicide.
Before that incident, the former financier had been housed in a cell with Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer facing murder charges. Their cell was in a special unit with strict security measures that is used to separate some inmates from the general population.
bron Artikel #2 Before Jail Suicide, Jeffrey Epstein Was Left Alone and Not Closely Monitored Aug. 11, 2019
It was Friday night in a protective housing unit of the federal jail in Lower Manhattan, and Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of trafficking girls for sex, was alone in a cell, only 11 days after he had been taken off a suicide watch.
Just that morning, thousands of documents from a civil suit had been released, providing lurid accounts accusing Mr. Epstein of sexually abusing scores of girls.
Mr. Epstein was supposed to have been checked by the two guards in the protective housing unit every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not followed that night, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said.
In addition, because Mr. Epstein may have tried to commit suicide three weeks earlier, he was supposed to have had another inmate in his cell, two officials said. But the jail had recently transferred his cellmate and allowed Mr. Epstein to be housed alone, a decision that also violated the jail’s procedures, the two officials said.
At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, guards doing morning rounds found him dead in his cell. Mr. Epstein, 66, had apparently hanged himself.
The disclosures about these seeming failures in Mr. Epstein’s detention at the Metropolitan Correctional Center deepened questions about his death and are very likely to be the focus of inquiries by the Justice Department and the F.B.I.
Officials cautioned that their initial findings about his detention were preliminary and could change.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has already come under intense criticism for not keeping Mr. Epstein under a suicide watch after he had been found in his cell on July 23 with injuries that suggested he had tried to kill himself.
The law-enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said that when the decision was made to remove Mr. Epstein from suicide watch, the jail informed the Justice Department that Mr. Epstein would have a cellmate and that a guard “would look into his cell” every 30 minutes.
But that was apparently not done, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the death was still under investigation. Senior law-enforcement officials, members of Congress and Mr. Epstein’s accusers have all demanded answers about why Mr. Epstein was not being more closely monitored.
Mr. Epstein’s death has also unleashed a torrent of unfounded conspiracy theories online, with people suggesting, without evidence, that Mr. Epstein was killed to keep him from incriminating others.Over the years, Mr. Epstein’s social circle had included dozens of well-known politicians, business executives, scientists, academics and other notables, including President Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain and Leslie H. Wexner, the retail billionaire behind Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works.
Investigators are expected to focus intensely on the timeline of what happened in the period after Mr. Epstein was found semiconscious less than three weeks ago in a shared cell, with bruises on his neck, after a judge denied him bail.
He was placed on a 24-hour suicide watch and received daily psychiatric evaluations, the law enforcement official said.
But six days later, prison officials determined he was no longer a threat to his own life and put him in a cell in the protective housing unit with another inmate, a prison official familiar with the incident said.
It is standard practice at the Metropolitan Correctional Center to place people who have been on suicide watch with a cellmate, two people with knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s case said. The theory is a cellmate can provide company to someone who may be suicidal, helping them stave off depression, and can also alert guards in an emergency.
But Mr. Epstein’s cellmate was moved out of the protective housing unit, leaving him alone, the prison official said.
Bureau of Prison officials said it is standard procedure for guards in protective housing units to check on inmates every half-hour.
It remained unclear why that procedure was not followed in Mr. Epstein’s case. Like many federal prisons and detention centers, the jail has been short staffed for some time, union leaders have said.
The two guards on duty in the special housing unit where Mr. Epstein was housed were both working overtime, the prison official with knowledge of the incident said.
One of the corrections officers was working his fifth straight day of overtime, while the other officer had been forced to work overtime, the official said. Cameron Lindsay, a former warden at the federal jail in Brooklyn and four other facilities, said senior officials at the M.C.C. made a series of mistakes in handling Mr. Epstein.
For starters, Mr. Lindsay said Mr. Epstein should not have been taken off suicide watch, even if the prison’s chief psychologist had determined it was safe to do so. With a high-profile inmate, the warden should have erred on the side of caution and kept him under close surveillance, separate from other inmates, Mr. Lindsay said.
“A psychologist is going to think one way, but a warden needs to think a different way,” he said. “You have to take the conservative, safe route and keep an individual like this on suicide watch.”
Mr. Lindsay pointed out that Mr. Epstein was also at risk to be attacked by other inmates because of the nature of the allegations against him. “In the subculture of prisons, it’s a badge of honor to take someone out like that,” he said.
Other former prison officials also questioned the prison’s decision to put Mr. Epstein on suicide watch for such a short period of time.
Though it is not uncommon for an inmate to be on suicide watch for less than a week, that is typically done in cases when an inmate receives bad news in court or from family — not soon after a suicide attempt, said Bob Hood, a former chief of internal affairs for the Bureau of Prisons.
In Mr. Epstein’s case, not only did he apparently attempt suicide on July 23, but humiliating information continued to be released to the public through news outlets, Mr. Hood said. That would normally have prompted prison officials to keep him under closer surveillance, not remove him from the 24-hour-a-day suicide watch, he said.
“Why he was taken off suicide watch is beyond me,” said Mr. Hood. He added, “A man is dead. The Bureau of Prisons dropped the ball. Period.”
Over Metropolitan Correctional Center:
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Built in 1975, the Metropolitan Correctional Center is an imposing 12-story brick building at 150 Park Row, a stone’s throw from the two federal courthouses in Lower Manhattan. It holds about 800 people in 10 housing units, most of them awaiting trial or sentencing.
Some of its wings — notably the 10 South special housing unit — have severe security measures, and have housed high-profile defendants over the years, among them the Gambino boss John Gotti, the terrorist Ramzi Yousef and the Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo.
An investigation by The New York Times that published last year revealed that federal prisons across the country, including the Metropolitan Correctional Center, have been dealing with rising violence as staffing at the facilities has dwindled.
Questions about the safety of such prisons arose late last year when James (Whitey) Bulger, the notorious Boston gangster, was brutally murdered in a West Virginia prison shortly after being moved there.
bronEr had om de 30 min gechecked moeten worden.... hoe gaat dat in hemelsnaam mis... en waarom überhaupt off suïcide watch?
De hoofdvraag luidt; zit er een samenzwering achter deze zelfmoord?
UpdatesDinsdag 13 aug 2019quote:
Het Amerikaans ministerie van Justitie meldt dinsdag dat twee bewakers die waren toegewezen om Jeffrey Epstein te bewaken in de nacht dat hij zelfmoord heeft gepleegd, met verlof zijn gestuurd. De gevangenisdirecteur mag papierwerk gaan doen. De aankondiging komt op het moment dat zowel de FBI als de inspecteur-generaal van het ministerie van Justitie de dood van Epstein onderzoeken.
Het ministerie van Justitie zei ook dat de directeur van een andere gevangenis in de staat New York de waarnemend directeur van het Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), waar Epstein werd vastgehouden, zal worden. Op de ochtend van zijn dood schreeuwde en gilde Epstein uit zijn gevangeniscel, vertelde een bron aan CBS News. Bewakers probeerden hem te reanimeren terwijl ze de financier, miljardair en veroordeeld zedendelinquent aanspoorden om te ademen: "Adem, Epstein, adem".
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'Onderste steen'
Gerechtelijke documenten uit 2011 onthullen dat Epstein verschillende appartementen beheerde in een gebouw op slechts een steenworp afstand van zijn 77 miljoen kostende New Yorkse herenhuis waar naar verluidt 'minderjarige meisjes van over de hele wereld' werden gehuisvest.
Barr gaf ook een strenge waarschuwing voor iedereen die zijn verantwoordelijkheid probeert te ontlopen. "Ik kan u verzekeren dat deze zaak zal doorgaan tegen iedereen die medeplichtig. Alle samenzweerders mogen niet achterover leunen. De slachtoffers verdienen gerechtigheid en zij zullen dat krijgen."
Lees meer:
Gevangenispersoneel gestraft na dood Epstein
Donderdag 15 aug 2019 The jail workers fell asleep [ Bericht 1% gewijzigd door SuperHartje op 17-08-2019 10:13:34 ]