New Delhi: For years, the blue-and-white striped building on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private island was a mystery. Was it a music room, a chapel, or a bathhouse? Documents released by the US Department of Justice in January have finally resolved the mystery—and raised new questions.
Epstein repeatedly referred to the square building as a ‘mosque’—though there is no record of it being used as a place of worship, The New York Times reported. The object of greater controversy is his appropriation of embroidered tapestries from the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest shrine. Of the highly significant religious items, one was used inside the Kaaba, while another, called a Kiswa, had once covered the outside of the shrine.
Aziza Al Ahmadi, aide to a consultant to the Saudi royal court, was involved in shipping the sacred tapestries to Epstein.
“The black piece was touched by minimum 10 million Muslims of different denominations, Sunni, Shia and others… 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,” she wrote in an email to him.
How Al Ahmadi procured the pieces remains unclear.
The artefacts became part of the decor for the building on Little Saint James, Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean. A secular Jew, Epstein was obsessed with Arab and Islamic aesthetics.
Tiles from a mosque in Uzbekistan were brought in for his building. “It will be for the inside walls, like a mosque,” he wrote to a contact in 2011.
The golden metal dome atop the building, as well as its striped walls, were inspired by the architecture of ancient Syria.
How Epstein designed his ‘mosque’
Epstein began planning the building in 2009, when he was in Palm Beach County Jail in Florida, having pled guilty to soliciting prostitution. At the time, he wanted a Turkish bathhouse surrounded by “Islamic gardening”. The plan soon changed to a “music room” which was to be inspired by mosques in the Middle East.
By 2011, he was calling his building a mosque. Two years later, he sent Romanian artist Ion Nicola a picture of the Yalbugah Hammam, a 15th-century bathhouse in Aleppo, Syria, as a reference. The bathhouse has a golden dome.
He also asked Nicola to replace the Arabic word for God with his initials in English.
“Remember we saw the aribic writing in black and white… instead of allah, i thought j’s and e ‘s,” he wrote in an email to the artist.
Aside from serving as a place to display his collection of expensive Islamic artefacts, the ‘mosque’ was also part of Epstein’s plans to expand his network of powerful people.
The 2014 photo of Epstein examining one of the tapestries with Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem ended up in Sulayem stepping down as DP World chairman. Another key figure was Norwegian diplomat Terje Rod-Larsen, who reportedly helped connect Epstein to individuals in the Saudi royal court. Epstein eventually managed to secure a meeting with Mohammed bin Salman, now the Saudi crown prince.
In 2017, Hurricane Maria damaged several items in the ‘mosque’.
Epstein died by suicide by hanging on 10 August 2019, while awaiting federal child sex trafficking charges at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.