A top university in Northern Ireland said Monday it was dropping former US senator George Mitchell’s name from one of its institutes because of his links with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The announcement came after the US Justice Department released a huge new batch of documents on the Epstein case.
“Queen’s University Belfast has taken the decision to remove the name of its former Chancellor, Senator George J. Mitchell, from the Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice,” said a statement sent to AFP.
Mitchell, 92, brokered the negotiations which led to the 1998 peace deal that largely ended three decades of conflict over British rule in Northern Ireland.
He was chancellor of the university, Northern Ireland’s most prestigious, from 1999 to 2009.
Queen’s said its decision followed the emergence of new information contained in the Epstein files released on Friday.
The latest tranche of millions of documents include 339 references to Mitchell, including several to get-togethers, appointments and lunches.
“JE would like you to try and schedule George Mitchell to come see him and Peter Mandelson while Peter is in NY,” said one mail dated September 10, 2011.
Mandelson, 72, who was the UK’s Northern Ireland Secretary under prime minister Tony Blair from 1999-2001, is also named in the Epstein files.
Sacked as Britain’s ambassador to the United States last year over his ties to Epstein, he allegedly received several payments from Epstein in the early 2000s. He has said he believes the claims to be “false”.
Mitchell has previously said he regrets having met and known Epstein and that he had no knowledge of any of his illegal actions.
“While no findings of wrongdoing by Senator Mitchell have been made, the university has concluded that, in light of this material, and mindful of the experiences of victims and survivors, it is no longer appropriate for its institutional spaces and entities to continue to bear his name,” the statement said.
It also said it would “remove the bust commemorating him from the University campus”.
Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre previously alleged that his close associate Ghislaine Maxwell instructed her to have sex with Mitchell among others, an accusation he has denied.
The allegation was contained in documents unsealed by a New York court in 2020 that related to a settled defamation suit that was filed by Giuffre against Maxwell in 2015.
On Sunday, the US-Ireland Alliance organisation which sends Americans to Ireland and Northern Ireland for a year of graduate study also said that its George J. Mitchell Scholarship Programme would no longer bear his name over his Epstein links.
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