British police released former Prince Andrew on Thursday after 11 hours in custody, with his shocking arrest earlier in the day making him the first senior British royal to be arrested in nearly 400 years. Police are probing his connections to the deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and whether he shared classified government information with him while serving as a U.K. trade representative from 2001 to 2011. King Charles' brother, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after being stripped of his royal title, is the most high-profile figure in the U.K. to be implicated in a widening scandal over ties to Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 awaiting trial on sex trafficking. Authorities did not reference sexual abuse allegations against Mountbatten-Windsor or Epstein's sex trafficking case; Mountbatten-Windsor settled a lawsuit with Epstein survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre in 2022 and has denied all wrongdoing.
Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr says this week's arrest feels like a "rupture" in British society because the royals are seen as "sacrosanct" and rarely subjected to such treatment. "And in America, what are we seeing? We're seeing this sort of culture of complete impunity, where it appears the law is not equal, where there are people who are above it."
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