r/EpsteinUnredacted

what's going on here? are these code words or no?? this seems totally strange, even for rich, powerful pervs...

There should be no hiding place for anyone involved in the Epstein scandal

W here is the heart of England? Traditionally, its centre is said to lie in the village of Meriden in Warwickshire. Geographically, though, England’s “true centre”, as Peter Ackroyd puts it in his history of the country, Foundation, is 20 miles further north, over the border into Leicestershire, on the land of a farm called Lindley Hall. Until recently, Ackroyd tells us, a family called Farmer lived there, which seems about right.

But where is England’s heart spiritually? This, it seems to me, is a more interesting question. Both these shires have a fair claim; lands of Shakespeare and Tolkien, Jasper Carrott and Jamie Vardy. TS Eliot believed the poetic soul of England lay further east, “half-heard, in the stillness” of rural Cambridgeshire. Yet, having returned from a weekend just outside of Shrewsbury, I wonder whether the real heart of England is in Shropshire.

I had only been to Shropshire once before. I went with my young children and so we got little chance to explore. This weekend, however, I was camping with friends and finally got a true sense of the place, understanding properly why AE Housman made the county his imagined idyll of “blue remembered hills”.

My friends and I stayed deep in this “land of lost content”, as Housman put it, camping in the garden of a pub called the Powis Arms (better than it sounds), where each morning we were woken by birdsong. My brother, armed with an app called Merlin – which identifies birds by their song, like a twitcher’s Shazam – detected robins and wrens, blackbirds and bluetits. My favourite call remains the coo-coo-coo of the wood pigeon. Am I alone in this? Mentioning this to one of my friends, he said the wood pigeon’s call is folk-remembered as “My toe bleeds, Betty”, which I think is probably the most English sentence imaginable.

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The Powis Arms sits in the valley, below an Iron Age hill fort known as Bury Ditches. Trudging up to this lost settlement today is like time-travelling. Ditches, Ackroyd reminds us in Foundation, are signs of ancient life, often connected by a network of roads and trackways, many of which are still in use. As Ackroyd put it: “We still move in the footsteps of our ancestors.”

I was so taken by the county that I turned back to Housman’s A Shropshire Lad on my return home, rediscovering poems such as “From Clee to heaven the beacon burns”, which is a lament on both the costs of war and empire and those who died for Queen and country: “It dawns in Asia, tombstones show/And Shropshire names are read;/And the Nile spills his overflow/Beside the Severn’s dead.”

What a strange feeling it is to happen across these words, written to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, contrasting “the Queen they served in war” with “the land they perished for”. My colleague Will Lloyd reflected on such feelings of death and duty in his cover story earlier this year, and called for the end of the monarchy following the sordid revelations that had emerged in the Epstein files.

But, as Gordon Brown details in this week’s issue, the scale of Britain’s involvement in Epstein’s sex-trafficking conspiracy is still not fully understood, nor is the scale of Britain’s complicity and subsequent failure to investigate. The former prime minister’s intervention comes at an awkward time for the country, with the King in the US, trying to fix a broken relationship and the kingdom at home more fragile than its rulers care to admit. The Prime Minister, meanwhile, finds himself fighting for survival as the Epstein scandal continues to swirl.

And yet the institutional failure continues today, and if those responsible are not brought to justice for aiding and abetting the trafficking of young women into Britain for the perverted gratification of older, richer men, this country’s reputation does not deserve to recover. Brown is right that there should be no hiding place for anyone involved in this scandal. If Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and all those implicated in the appointment of Peter Mandelson can be hauled before parliament to explain themselves, as has happened in recent weeks, then so too should anyone involved in the former prince Andrew’s long and tawdry entanglement with Jeffrey Epstein. And yes, in my view, that should include royalty.

[Further reading: Keir Starmer puts his fists up]

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This article appears in the 29 Apr 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The cover-up?

Epstein Obtained Objects From Islam’s Holiest Site for His Island ‘Mosque’

A compact, cube-shaped building, painted in blue and white horizontal stripes, topped with a metal dome and flanked by two palm trees.

Jeffrey Epstein’s messages cast light on an unusual building on his private island and show how his connections helped him secure tapestries from Mecca for it.

A photo released by the House Oversight Committee showed a building once owned by Jeffrey Epstein on Little Saint James, his private island in the Caribbean. He referred to it as a mosque.

Epstein Obtained Objects From Islam’s Holiest Site for His Island ‘Mosque’

Jeffrey Epstein’s messages cast light on an unusual building on his private island and show how his connections helped him secure tapestries from Mecca for it.

A photo released by the House Oversight Committee showed a building once owned by Jeffrey Epstein on Little Saint James, his private island in the Caribbean. He referred to it as a mosque.Credit...

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· 10:33 min

April 29, 2026Updated 12:16 p.m. ET

Tapestries embroidered with Quranic verses were shipped from the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest shrine. Tiles came from a mosque in Uzbekistan. A golden metal dome was made to replicate the architecture of ancient Syria.

Jeffrey Epstein spent years making connections across the Middle East, in pursuit of business deals and two intertwined hobbies: acquiring rare Islamic artifacts with which to decorate an unusual building on his private island, and expanding his network of wealthy, powerful people.

Through connections that extended into the royal court of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Epstein secured a meeting with Mohammed bin Salman, now the Saudi crown prince, and also obtained elaborate tapestries that once adorned the sacred spaces inside the Kaaba and covered its exterior walls.

Mr. Epstein’s dual passions were encapsulated in a single photo from 2014. In it, he poses with Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a prominent Emirati executive, as they admire one such tapestry splayed on the floor of Mr. Epstein’s New York townhouse. Like others in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, Mr. bin Sulayem was ultimately brought down by his association. Earlier this year, he was forced to resign as the head of DP World, a Dubai ports company.

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Jeffrey Epstein standing next to another man in a fairly opulent room at the foot of a staircase. Both are looking down at a rug or tapestry that’s been spread out on the floor.

Mr. Epstein and an Emirati businessman, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, in a 2014 photo released by the Justice Department. They are looking at a tapestry from the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest shrine, at Mr. Epstein’s townhouse in New York.

The ways in which Mr. Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, sought to concurrently expand his network and his art collection are further revealed in the millions of pages of records released in January by the Justice Department.

The documents also resolve a lingering mystery about a strange building on Little Saint James, Mr. Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, whose construction and decoration was a yearslong obsession for the financier.

The building, a blue-and-white-striped structure topped with a golden dome, has been variously described as a music room, a pavilion, a chapel and even an occult temple. But correspondence between Mr. Epstein and his associates over many years, and an interview with an artist hired to work on it, illuminate its intended purpose.

For Mr. Epstein, a secular Jew, the building was a “mosque.”

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An image of Mr. Epstein’s “mosque” released by the Justice Department.Credit...U.S. Justice Department

Making a ‘Mosque’

Mr. Epstein had a longstanding fixation on Islamic design. In 2003, he boasted to Vanity Fair that he owned “the largest Persian rug you’ll ever see in a private home — so big, it must have come from a mosque.”

His vision for an island shrine began while he was in a Palm Beach County, Fla., jail, having pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution. Before his release in 2009, Mr. Epstein hired architects to design a “hammam,” a Turkish bathhouse surrounded by “Islamic gardening,” according to his correspondence.

He soon scrapped that plan and instead sought a permit for a “music room” in a building he called 5 Palms, emailing himself design ideas, including images of ancient Middle Eastern mosques.

In 2011, Mr. Epstein wrote to a contact in Uzbekistan seeking authentic tiles. “It will be for the inside walls, like a mosque,” he said.

Ion Nicola, a Romanian artist, was hired for the project. In an interview in March, Mr. Nicola confirmed that Mr. Epstein regularly called the building his “mosque.” (It remains unclear if Mr. Epstein intended that the building ever be used as an actual mosque.)

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The Yalbugah Hammam, or bathhouse, in Aleppo, Syria, which dates to 1491.Credit...B.O'Kane/Alamy

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The property once owned by Mr. Epstein on Little Saint James island.

Mr. Epstein’s records show that in 2013, he sent Mr. Nicola a picture of the Yalbugah Hammam, a 15th-century bathhouse in Aleppo, Syria, with a golden dome, a recessed arch over the door and striped masonry, seeking sketches that would resemble it.

Among other tasks, Mr. Epstein asked for a design replacing the Arabic word for God with his initials in English. “Remember we saw the aribic writing in black and white,” he wrote to Mr. Nicola in an email plagued with his customary typos and misspellings. “instead of allah, i thought j’s and e ‘s.”

The Diplomat and the Prince

Around 2010, Mr. Epstein became friendly with someone who would help make his ambitions for the mosque and his business become a reality: Terje Rod-Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat. The files show the men frequently exchanged messages about business as well as personal and international affairs.

Saudi Arabia was a common refrain in their yearslong correspondence, but the chatter about the kingdom intensified in 2016. Mohammed bin Salman, known as M.B.S., who was then the deputy crown prince, wanted to take the state-owned petroleum company Aramco public, and Mr. Epstein hoped to become his financial adviser.

Mr. Rod-Larsen connected Mr. Epstein to Raafat Al-Sabbagh, a consultant to the Saudi royal court, and his aide Aziza Al Ahmadi. Through them, Mr. Epstein waged an intense campaign to woo Prince Mohammed. He met them in New York and pressed to pitch the royal in person, sharing what he called in a message “radical ideas,” like the creation of a new currency called “the shariah” for use among Muslims.

Soon, a visit was in the works. Ms. Al Ahmadi sent Mr. Epstein to the Saudi Consulate, instructing him to say “that you, Jeffrey Epstein, has an invitation from His Royal Highness: PRINCE mohammed bin salman.”

After arriving in the kingdom, Mr. Epstein emailed Mr. Rod-Larsen two photos of himself joking around with Mohammed, one of which he would later display in his New York home.

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Mr. Epstein’s office displayed a photo of him with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Souvenirs of a Sacred Site

Ms. Al Ahmadi and Mr. Epstein met in New York early in 2017. At the same time, their assistants were corresponding about a tent being shipped from Saudi Arabia to his island.

Her representative said more items would soon be sent “for the mosque.”

“We are receiving 3 pieces from the Kaaba,” Mr. Epstein’s assistant told a customs broker.

A separate document included pictures of embroidered tapestries. One was “used inside the Kaaba,” according to the document; another, called a Kiswa, had covered the outside of the shrine; and a third was from the same special factory in Mecca, it said.

A Kiswa has great religious significance. Every year, a new covering for the Kaaba, costing about $5 million, is crafted by hundreds of artisans in a royal workshop, using about 1,500 pounds of raw silk and 250 pounds of gold and silver thread.

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Worshipers gathered in March around the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

After a Kiswa is removed, it is divided. The tapestries can be donated to institutions or individuals or distributed for charity auctions.

Ms. Al Ahmadi described her shipment’s gravitas to Mr. Epstein in an email. “The black piece was touched by minimum 10 million Muslims of different denominations, Sunni, Shia and others,” she said. “They walk around the Kaaba seven rounds then every one tries as much as they can to touch it and they kept their prayers, wishes, tears and hopes on this piece. Hoping after that all their prayers to be accepted.”

How she came by the pieces is unclear. Ms. Al Ahmadi did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Saudi government, Mr. Al-Sabbagh or Mr. Rod-Larsen’s attorney.

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One of the tapestries from the Kaaba that were sent to Mr. Epstein.

Dark Clouds

In 2017, Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc across the Caribbean, including on Mr. Epstein’s island. One record showed that some items in the “mosque” were destroyed or damaged.

But rough weather was not the only problem plaguing Mr. Epstein and the people in his orbit. Mohammed had risen to crown prince and declined his guidance, evidently annoying Mr. Epstein. “The kingdom needs lots of expensive help now as they did not follow the jew directions,” he texted Mr. Rod-Larsen, presumably referring to himself.

After the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, Mr. Epstein wrote to Mr. Rod-Larsen about allegations that Prince Mohammed had given the order. (The crown prince has denied ordering that Mr. Khashoggi be killed but has accepted responsibility for the murder, which took place under his leadership.)

“Dark cloud over his head,” the diplomat replied. “And it won’t go away.”

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An aerial view of Great Saint James Island, which Mr. Epstein also owned, in 2019, with his Middle Eastern-inspired “mosque” on a hill in the distance.Credit...Marco Bello/Reuters

For Mr. Epstein, that prediction would soon prove true. Within weeks, a Miami Herald investigation exposed secret details of his 2008 plea deal, ultimately leading to his downfall.

In exchange for that stint in county jail, Mr. Epstein had been promised immunity from prosecution on far more severe charges.

He was arrested on new charges in July 2019. The next month, Mr. Epstein transferred ownership of his island to a private trust. Two days later, he was found dead after hanging himself in a federal jail in Manhattan.

Will Houp and Urvashi Uberoy contributed reporting.

Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.

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