Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, has begun legal action against the British police force that arrested him and searched his properties this year as part of its investigation into his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles III, was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office over accusations that he had shared confidential information with Mr. Epstein, the convicted sex offender. Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor was later released without charge.
Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor is challenging the legal status of search warrants that allowed the police to search two of his properties after his arrest, including his former residence at Royal Lodge in Windsor and another property on the king’s Sandringham Estate.
The search warrants were issued by the Old Bailey, England’s central criminal court, on Feb. 18, as part of the investigation, according to a statement from the British judicial office.
A private hearing in the case will be held on Thursday afternoon, the judicial office said.
The Thames Valley Police, the force that arrested Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, said in a statement on Monday that it was “engaged in legal proceedings in relation to warrants previously obtained from the Central Criminal Court.”
“As these legal proceedings are currently ongoing, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further,” it added.
The police said that the investigation into the accusations of misconduct in public office was continuing. Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied any wrongdoing in his associations with Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide while in prison in 2019.
The depth of the two men’s relationship was revealed in the Epstein files, the huge collection of documents, photographs and emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice this year, accelerating a decade-long fall from grace for the former prince.
Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles and kicked out of his longtime home, Royal Lodge, before his arrest on Feb. 19, his 66th birthday. It was the first time that a member of the British royal family had been arrested in modern history.
A photograph of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor slumped in the back seat of a car as he left the police station that evening was splashed across the front page of many British newspapers the next day. One of the last British royal figures arrested before then was King Charles I, who was detained during the English Civil War in 1647, and who went on to challenge the lawfulness of those proceedings.
Since February, Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor has rarely been seen in public. In June, he was photographed leaving a horse event at the Sandringham Estate.
Some legal experts said that judicial reviews of this kind were not uncommon.
Andrew Gilmore, a partner at Grosvenor Law in London, said in a statement that because of the high-profile nature of the case, the warrants would have been thoroughly examined by the initial judge who issued them.
“Given the close public scrutiny this case has received, it would be very surprising if the police had not made every effort to ensure that the search warrants were properly obtained and lawful,” he added. Nick Vamos, a criminal lawyer at Peters & Peters and a former head of special crime at the Crown Prosecution Service, said that search warrants could be overturned on various grounds.
“However, even if the High Court ultimately quashes the warrants, that does not necessarily mean everything seized has to be returned or that the police can no longer use it,” Mr. Vamos said in a written statement.
The police can apply to the court to retain material if they have grounds to immediately seize evidence again, he explained, adding: “If there were more fundamental problems with the warrants, such as police acting in bad faith, they may be ordered to return all the material.”
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