Calls for Prince Andrew to lose military titles

The newspaper published the statement of Julian Perreira, a veteran of the Grenadier Guards, who calls for the “immediate resignation” of the Duke of York as Colonel of that infantry regiment, an honorary position he inherited in 2017 from his father, the late Prince Phillip.

Perreira declares that allowing him to continue with this and other titles in the Armed Forces will mean “a stain on the proud history” of the Grenadiers and will “devalue their work.”

According to the newspaper, the officers have been uncomfortable having to toast the duke’s health during the dinners of the regiment.

“The Times” points out that Andrew, 61, holds nine military positions and it is up to his mother, the Queen, to officially withdraw them.

The prince faces a civil process in New York initiated by the Australian-American Virginia Giuffre, 38, who accuses him of having sexually abused her three times when she was 17, which the duke denies.

Giuffre maintains that she was a victim of sex trafficking by the American financier Jeffrey Epstein – who committed suicide in prison in 2019 – and his ex-lover and collaborator, the British Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted on December 29 of sex trafficking of minors in a process parallel criminal in progress.

Thanks to the mediation of the couple, the prince, a friend of both, would have sexually abused her in London, New York, and on a private island of Epstein in the Caribbean, she argues.

With part of the lawsuit against Andrew, it is expected that today the New York court will make public an out-of-court agreement that Giuffre would have signed with Epstein and that, according to the defense of the Duke of York, would exonerate him of any responsibility.

The young woman’s lawyers have requested documents that prove the “inability to sweat” that the son of Elizabeth II alleged as an “alibi” to deny that he knew the plaintiff, who had detailed in an interview that he had sweated profusely in one of his encounters.