Sean Combs – better known as P Diddy – has been caged up inside the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center since September awaiting trial for charges, including sex trafficking
Rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs has spent the past eight months locked up in jail as the shamed celebrity begins his long-awaited trial in New York today (May 12).
The 55-year old is facing multiple charges, including sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He denies all the allegations made against him.
Diddy gave the thumbs up to supporters as he entered the courtroom of the federal court. The music mogul came from the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) – where he has been caged since September – wearing casual, non-court clothing after he was granted permission by the judge.
The jail was once described as “hell on earth” and “a scary place to be” by lawyer Andrew Dalack. It has been the city’s main federal detention centre since 2021, when the Bureau of Prisons closed Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center – where paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein died – due to appalling conditions inside.
The crowded MDC holds around 1,200 inmates as of October 2024 and previous infamous prisoners include fellow disgraced rapper R Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted associate. While there, Maxwell said she was physically abused by correctional officers who held her in ‘defacto solitary confinement’ and kept her awake at night with torches and regular, humiliating searches.
A letter by her attorney Bobbi C. Sternheim also said: “Cockroaches and rodents are plentiful and glue tracks have been placed in Ms. Maxwell’s day area to help remediate the problem. The worst part is there’s no real outdoors space. It’s just a place to warehouse human beings.”
Diddy’s lawyers noted last year that: “Several courts in this District have recognised that the conditions at Metropolitan Detention Center are not fit for pre-trial detention”. They wrote: “Just earlier this summer, an inmate was murdered. At least four inmates have died by suicide there in the past three years. Stabbings at least a couple of times a week.”
On June 7 2024, Uriel Whyte was stabbed to death inside the MDC while waiting to go on trial for gun charges. Another man, Edwin Cordero, died after being injured in a fight that broke out in the jail.
Inmate Eli told Spectrum News NY1 after Whyte’s death: “There’s stabbings, there’s stabbings at least a couple times a week.” In August last year, US District Judge Gary J Brown refused to send a defendant in a tax fraud case to MDC over fears of the, “dangerous, barbaric conditions that have existed for some time”.
Judge Brown recalled one disturbing incident involving a prisoner who was reportedly denied medical treatment after being stabbed several times. Instead, he was locked in his cell for 25 days. “Allegations of inadequate supervision, unbridled assaults, and lack of sufficient medical care are supported by an increasing body of evidence, with certain instances that are irrefutable,” the judge said.
Back in February 2019, a fire was said to have cut off the power and heat to sections of the jail, leaving inmates in the dark suffering from near-freezing temperatures. Deirdre von Dornum, who oversees the Federal Defenders’ Brooklyn team, said at the time that that inmates were forced to wrap themselves, “head to toe in towels and blankets”.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
