Ghislaine Maxwell is losing her hair due to prison conditions, lawyers say

Ms Maxwell’s lawyers renewing request for bail

File image: The federal prison holding Ghislaine Maxwell has been hit with coronavirus outbreak  (Getty Images)

Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers have complained that she has lost over 15 pounds and is losing her hair due to “extraordinarily onerous conditions” in prison.

The filing by the British socialite’s lawyers was in response to a letter by the federal bureau of prisons (BOP) that claimed Ms Maxwell “remains in good health” and has a healthy weight of 134 pounds. 

Ms Maxwell’s lawyers have renewed their application for bail, after the previous bid for release on $5mn bond was denied by the district judge.    

“It is obvious that Maxwell is bearing the brunt of BOP incompetence,” Bobbi Sternheim, Ms Maxwell’s lawyer, wrote to the US district judge Alison Nathan. 

Ms Maxwell’s lawyers are arguing that she is only being subjected to tough conditions after her former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail cell last year, ruled a suicide, which they say was the consequence of “negligence” by the bureau of prisons. 

Her attorney said “extraordinarily onerous conditions of constraint on Maxwell” are not imposed as a strict security measure “but rather in response to the failed handling of a completely different inmate.”

Ms Maxwell was arrested in July and is awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking of a minor and perjury. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her and of helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein abuse minor girls in 1990s. 

Ms Maxwell’s lawyers have been complaining of her treatment, noting that she is being excessively strip-searched, woken up every 15 minutes by flashlights to ensure she is alive and not given proper meals.

However, the BOP argues that she is being treated like any other inmate in the jail and has access to education and leisure programmes and a computer.

In filings made on 25 November and unsealed on Monday, Ms Maxwell’s lawyer Mark Cohen asked that her new bail application be filed under seal and should not be made public to protect friends and family from harassment and media scrutiny.

The district judge, however, agreed to conceal the identity of the friends and family in court papers but said that the bail hearing would be held in open court.

Ms Maxwell was placed under quarantine on 18 November after coming into contact with an inmate who tested positive for Covid-19. Her lawyer argued that she should stay in a New York hotel until her trial in July 2021 due to fears over levels of coronavirus in the prison.