A British oil worker says he was thrown into jail with al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq – all because of an unpaid £4,000 debt.
Brian Glendinning was detained in Basra because of an Interpol red notice issued by Qatar five years ago.
Red notices are uploaded to a central database accessible to police in 195 countries – and serve as digital wanted posters that ensure fugitives are tracked across borders.
But while they are mostly used to capture those accused of serious crimes, a new Sky News podcast has found they can be vulnerable to abuse from authoritarian governments.
Click to subscribe to Dirty Work: The misuse of Interpol red notices
Brian is 44, and had been living and working in Qatar as an oil engineer. He had taken out a bank loan and was paying it off until he became ill, left the state, and lost his job.
After returning to the UK, Brian says he contacted the bank to try and figure out a repayment plan. But he had paid most of it off, and figured he would settle it eventually.
In the meantime, the bank took the father of three to court – and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Image:
Brian Glendinning and his family
Brian was arrested while on his way to a job in Iraq in September 2022 – and his wife Kimberley recalled the moment when she found out he was being held at the airport.
“My heart actually missed a beat,” she said, her voice quavering.
Nobody knew when or how Brian would be released. He was moved from Basra to a prison in the capital, Baghdad.
He was able to convince the prison guards to let him call home occasionally, but his family never knew when the phone would ring.
Conditions inside the jail were poor. The toilet was an open drain in the corner of a cell which he shared with 42 people, some of them hardened criminals. He had to pay some of them for protection.
Brian’s brother John, who dropped everything to help coordinate his release, said: “In his words, they were al Qaeda terrorists. People who have murdered their own father. And Brian’s in for about the last £4,000 to 5,000 of a loan. It doesn’t make sense.”
Image:
Brian and his granddaughter
Kimberley was equally stunned. Her husband is a good guy, she says, and has never been in trouble before.
Her mind kept racing with dark thoughts about what he might be going through. She was afraid that even if she did get her husband back – he might never be the same again.
“Brian said to me that there’s things that he’s seen in that cell … he never thought he’d see in his lifetime.”
Unlike many others, Brian’s nightmare did eventually end. He spent nine weeks in prison before striking a deal with the bank to get them to drop the notice. He had to pay more than £30,000 – a sum far larger than the original debt. But he had a supportive family and assistance from the British government.
His return home hasn’t been easy. It’s clear this experience has shaken him deeply.
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“I’ve lost my way,” he said in his first interview since returning from Iraq. “I had a plan, a route that I was going down. I’m wondering how to get back on that path.”
While he has returned to work, he feels a deep sense of dread at the thought of getting on a plane – even for a family holiday. “I’m always thinking, something bad is going to happen to me.”
Brian expressed hope that one day he will forget what happened – and said: “I just want it to go away.”
“Will I ever get over it? Will I ever put it behind me?” he asked.
Representatives of the Qatari government and the national bank were approached for comment and have not responded.
Image:
A protest to free Brian Glendinning. Pic Sahar Zand
Lives can be ruined
Most people don’t know that you can be locked up in a country you’ve never been to – for a small amount of debt you owe in a country you don’t live in anymore.
Most people with a red notice have no idea until they try to cross a border.
But Brian’s story isn’t as unusual as it sounds.
We don’t know exactly how many people are actually arrested on these notices each year, but data from 2016 suggests that the figure is in the low thousands.
About 20,000 Interpol notices are issued each year – and when the system works, it captures people wanted for murder, drug trafficking, sexual exploitation, terrorism and money laundering.
But when the system breaks down, it is vulnerable to abuse by authoritarian governments tracking dissidents, businesspeople seeking leverage, powerful people settling scores, and even banks collecting debt.
According to the available data, these are a small minority of all red notices.
But for each person, the consequences can be devastating: families separated, businesses fallen apart, freedoms taken away.
In short, lives can be ruined.
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2:53
Being sent to China ‘equal to death’
The Uyghur activist
Zeynure Hasan hasn’t seen her husband, Idris, a Uyghur activist who lived in exile in Istanbul, for two years. The couple’s three children are growing up without their father.
“I am angry,” Zeynure told Sky News. “My children ask every day: where is my dad?”
Idris is a computer scientist who spread the word about China’s treatment of his people. Human rights groups have called China’s treatment of Uyghurs a genocide. The Chinese authorities accused Idris of what they call “terrorism”.
He was arrested at an airport in Morocco after China requested a red notice through Interpol. Although Interpol quickly cancelled the notice – admitting that it was in breach of its own rules against political, religious and racial persecution – it was too late. Idris was already in a Moroccan prison. Despite claiming asylum, he is still in prison and fighting against extradition to China.
“If the Moroccan government send me to China, this would be equal to death for me,” Idris told us on the phone from prison, where he’s in solitary confinement. “Maybe I am forever in prison. I cannot see my children and my family – forever.”
Authorities in China and Morocco were approached for comment.
Image:
Pic Sahar Zand
Talking to Interpol
Interpol is a membership organisation for the world’s police forces.
It was founded in the wake of the First World War, when global powers came together to combat cross-border crime. As global travel has become easier, and technology more sophisticated, fighting international crime is harder than ever. Interpol will celebrate its 100th anniversary later this year, and the challenges it faces have never been greater.
“If a murderer is on the run, time matters. It’s a time-sensitive thing. Somebody can jump on a plane in a few hours, be somewhere else and commit the next crime. So we need to act fast,” Interpol’s secretary-general, Jurgen Stock, told Sky News.
The red notice system is the cornerstone of Interpol’s toolkit. A police force in one country can issue a red notice request to Interpol for a fugitive. Interpol then pins that red notice to an internal message board visible to police around the world. Each country then acts on the information according to their own protocols. These can vary significantly. Some countries don’t generally act on them, others treat them as if they were arrest warrants.
Despite Interpol’s own guidelines saying that notices can’t be actioned if they have political, ethnic, military or religious intent, it’s clear that some of this nature are still getting through.
Image:
Jurgen Stock from Interpol spoke to Sky News
Mr Stock took the helm in 2014 and will leave office next year. To combat abuses of red notices, he created a new taskforce to check them prior to circulation and beefed up the review council that investigates the worst cases. He sees his red notice reforms as defining his legacy.
But cases are still slipping through the net, and human rights lawyers and advocates claim the system is open to error and abuse.
In an interview at Interpol’s French headquarters, Mt Stock described the red notice system as “very robust” but admitted it can break down – decrying every abuse as “one case too many”.
The organisation has improved its transparency under his leadership, but it is difficult to draw conclusions about the success of his reforms within the notice system from the available data.
The secretary-general isn’t willing to be drawn on the specifics of any indiual cases, and won’t name the countries with the worst track records. Instead he points to the challenge of ensuring cooperation between countries with very different legal systems, who are sometimes locked in thorny diplomatic relations, and occasionally even at war with each other.
He also defends the red notice system as a whole, for its “unique capability” for catching the world’s most wanted international fugitives.
“The percentage of international-related organised crime and terrorism is increasing all around the world – that makes this a mechanism only Interpol can proe.”
Image:
Brian Glendinning
‘I’ve lost my way’
Interpol has a two-step process for preventing misuse.
The Notices and Diffusions Taskforce examines notices before they are published.
In 2022, it concluded that 304 notices contravened its rules against political, racial or religious persecution or were otherwise in contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and declined to issue them.
The data for the secondary review body is more limited. The latest report shows that hundreds of people apply each year to have a red notice removed.
In 2021, Interpol’s post-publication review body concluded that 296 cases weren’t compliant with their own rules and were deleted.
Experts like Ted Bromund, an Interpol historian, maintain that this figure only represents the tip of the iceberg.
“If you see a cockroach on the floor of your kitchen and you stamp on it, what are the odds that there are no more cockroaches under the fridge, behind the range or in the walls?” he said.
There are very few countries around the world where a relatively small amount of unpaid bank debt would result in imprisonment. But Interpol inadvertently proes the tools for countries to “export their justice system” abroad, according to Radha StIrling, an advocate who has helped the Glendinning family navigate his detention.
“Interpol is their bypass, it allows them to export their justice worldwide at the click of a button,” she told us.
Radha runs Detained in Dubai, an organisation that advocates for people detained abroad. Interpol notice cases are an increasing part of her workload. She has seen hundreds of clients’ lives change beyond recognition.
“A lot of the time the Interpol notice is the punishment,” she says. “It’s a method of state harassment.”
