‘I was thrown in jail with al-Qaeda terrorists over a £4,000 debt’
“I am being held at the airport. Please don’t worry too much,” the message read. “I think I will be okay. But who knows?” Kimberley Glendinning won’t forget the moment she read those words. “My heart actually missed a beat,” she says, her voice quavering.
In September 2022, Kimberley’s husband, Brian, was on his way to a job in Iraq. He’d worked in the oil industry for years, often abroad. She was used to it.
So when he left their home in Kincardine, Scotland, she was expecting him to check in during his stopover in Dubai, and again on arrival in Basra. His message from Dubai was cheerful. But when he landed in Basra – everything changed. Brian had been detained because of an Interpol Red Notice.
“It was horrible,” Kimberley says.
Brian, who is 44, has three children with Kimberley. Nobody knew when or how he would be released. He was moved from Basra to a prison in the capital Baghdad where he was able to convince the prison guards to let him call home occasionally, but his family never knew when the phone would ring.
The Red Notice was uploaded to Interpol by Qatar, and dates back about five years to when Brian was living and working there as an oil engineer. He had taken out a bank loan and was working and paying it off until he became ill, left Qatar and lost his job.
Brian Glendinning and his family
Back in 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 him to court and that court issued a warrant for his arrest, and made a request for a Red Notice through Interpol.
Brian’s prison conditions in Baghdad, where he spent the majority of his time, 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.
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“In his words, they were al Qaeda terrorists. People who have murdered their own father,” says John Glendinning, Brian’s brother who dropped everything to help coordinate his release. “And Brian’s in for about the last £4-5,000 of a loan. It doesn’t make sense.”
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.”
Representatives of the Qatari government and the national bank were approached for comment and have not responded.
Brian and his granddaughter
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.
About 20,000 Interpol notices are issued each year – acting as digital wanted posters which help police forces fight cross-border crime, and find fugitives. The notices are uploaded to a central database accessible to police in 195 countries.
When the notice system works, it helps capture people wanted for the most serious crimes: murder, drug trafficking, sexual exploitation, terrorism, money laundering. 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.
A protest to free Brian Glendinning. Pic Sahar Zand
When the system breaks down, it is vulnerable to abuse by authoritarian governments tracking dissidents, business people 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.
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 us. “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.
Zeynure holds a picture of her husband
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 the world 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,” says Interpol’s Secretary General, Jurgen Stock.
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.
Pic Sahar Zand
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.
Stock took the helm in 2014 and will leave office next year. To combat abuses of Red Notices, he created a new task force to check them prior to circulation and beefed up the review council that investigates the worst cases. Stock 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, 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 Jurgen Stock, but it is difficult to draw conclusions about the success of his reforms within the notice system from the available data.
Jurgen Stock from Interpol spoke to Sky News
The Secretary General isn’t willing to be drawn on the specifics of any individual 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 provide.”
‘I’ve lost my way’
Interpol’s limited public data shows that hundreds of people apply each year to have a Red Notice removed after encountering problems at international borders. In most of those cases, the notices are found to be non-compliant with Interpol’s rules. For example, in 2021, about 300 non-compliant notices were issued out of a total 24,000. A further 1,400 were weeded out before being published.
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.
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.
Zeynure with her children
There are very few countries around the world where a relatively small amount of unpaid bank debt would result in imprisonment. But Interpol, inadvertently, provides the tools for countries to “export their justice system” abroad, according to Radha Sterling, 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.”
Brian’s return home hasn’t been easy. It’s clear that his experience has shaken him deeply.
“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.”
For Brian, there are enduring questions.
“I just hope one day that I’ll wake up in the morning and I can’t even remember it. I just want it to go away,” he said.
“Will I ever get over it? Will I ever put it behind me?”
“Liberation day” was due to be on 1 April. But Donald Trump decided to shift it by a day because he didn’t want anyone to think it was an April fool.
It is no joke for him and it is no joke for governments globally as they brace for his tariff announcements.
It is stunning how little we know about the plans to be announced in the Rose Garden of the White House later today.
It was telling that we didn’t see the President at all on Tuesday. He and all his advisers were huddled in the West Wing, away from the cameras, finalising the tariff plans.
Follow the events of Liberation Day live as they unfold
Three key figures are central to it all.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the so-called ‘measured voice’. A former hedge fund manager, he has argued for targeted not blanket tariffs.
Peter Navarro is Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing. A long-time aide and confidante of the president, he is a true loyalist and a firm believer in the merits of tariffs.
His economic views are well beyond mainstream economic thought – precisely why he appeals to Trump.
The third key character is Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary and the biggest proponent of the full-throttle liberation day tariff juggernaut.
The businessman, philanthropist, Trump fundraiser and billionaire (net worth ranging between $1bn and $2bn) has been among the closest to Trump over the past 73 days of this presidency – frequently in and out of the West Wing.
If anything goes wrong, observers here in Washington suspect Trump will make Lutnick the fall guy.
What are Donald Trump’s tariffs, what is ‘liberation day’ and how does it all affect the UK?
And what if it does all go wrong? What if Trump is actually the April fool?
“It’s going to work…” his press secretary said when asked if it could all be a disaster, driving up the cost of living for Americans and creating global economic chaos.
“The president has a brilliant team who have been studying these issues for decades and we are focussed on restoring the global age of America…” Karoline Leavitt said.
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‘Days of US being ripped off are over’
Dancing to the president’s tune
My sense is that we should see “liberation day” not as the moment it’s all over in terms of negotiations for countries globally as they try to carve out deals with the White House. Rather it should be seen as the start.
Trump, as always, wants to be seen as the one calling the shots, taking control, seizing the limelight. He wants the world to dance to his tune. Today is his moment.
But beyond today, alongside the inevitable tit-for-tat retaliation, expect to see efforts by nations to seek carve-outs and to throw bones to Trump; to identify areas where trade policies can be tweaked to placate the president.
Even small offerings which change little in a material sense could give Trump the chance to spin and present himself as the winning deal maker he craves to be.
One significant challenge for foreign governments and their diplomats in Washington has been engaging the president himself with proposals he might like.
Negotiations take place with a White House team who are themselves unsure where the president will ultimately land. It’s resulted in unsatisfactory speculative negotiations.
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Treasury minister: ‘We’ll do everything to secure a deal’
Too much faith placed in the ‘special relationship’?
The UK believes it’s in a better position than most other countries globally. It sits outside the EU giving it autonomy in its trade policy, its deficit with the US is small, and Trump loves Britain.
It’s true too that the UK government has managed to accelerate trade conversations with the White House on a tariff-free trade partnership. Trump’s threats have forced conversations that would normally sit in the long grass for months.
Yet, for now, the conversations have yielded nothing firm. That’s a worry for sure. Did Keir Starmer have too much faith in the ‘special relationship’?
Downing Street will have identified areas where they can tweak trade policy to placate Trump. Cars maybe? Currently US cars into the UK carry a 10% tariff. Digital services perhaps?
US food? Unlikely – there are non-tariff barriers on US food because the consensus seems to be that chlorinated chicken and the like isn’t something UK consumers want.
Easier access to UK financial services maybe? More visas for Americans?
For now though, everyone is waiting to see what Trump does before they either retaliate or relent and lower their own market barriers.
A man inside Mandalay has told Sky News bodies remain under “collapsed and inclining” buildings after the Myanmar earthquake – as a woman was freed from rubble after 91 hours.
The local inside Myanmar said many of the structures in the city were wrecked or badly damaged after the 7.7 magnitude quake on Friday, adding: “There are some bodies, some dead bodies, that still remain and other destruction”.
Meanwhile, in a televised address, Myanmar’s military leader Min Aung Hlaing said the number of dead had risen to 2,719 and is expected to exceed 3,000.
Some 4,521 people have been injured, while a further 441 are missing.
More than 10,000 buildings are known to have collapsed or been severely damaged in central and northwest Myanmar, the World Health Organisation said.
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Before and after: Myanmar earthquake
Smell of dead bodies near destroyed buildings
In Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, which was close to the quake’s epicentre, 50 children and two teachers were killed when their preschool collapsed, the United Nations said.
The local in the city told Sky News that “a lot of local assistance associations like charity groups are still struggling with digging out the corpses, the dead bodies, from the destruction”.
He said that “when we pass near the destructions, the collapsed building or very damaged building, we can smell” dead bodies.
“The smell of the dead bodies after four days… it still remains,” he said, before adding: “For the social assistance association… they need permission [to give aid] especially from the government.
“If they don’t have permission, then they cannot do anything.”
People sheltering in a makeshift tent camp in Mandalay. Pic: Reuters
He also said others in Mandalay are struggling after the earthquake, which followed the city being affected by cyclones, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the civil war in Myanmar – where a junta seized power in a coup in 2021.
“Some people, they say they have nothing at all,” the local added. “They have no more home, they have no more belongings, because its already damaged.”
Woman freed after 91 hours under rubble
It comes after the fire department in Myanmar’s capital freed a woman trapped under rubble 91 hours after the building collapsed.
The 63-year-old woman was freed early on Tuesday in Naypyidaw.
As the country continues to recover, a worker from the International Rescue Committee said people fear aftershocks and are sleeping outside on roads or in open fields.
Communities are struggling to meet basic needs such as access to clean water and sanitation, and emergency teams are working “tirelessly” to locate survivors and provide aid, the UN said in a report.
Rescue efforts have been complicated by the civil war, as rebel groups say the junta has conducted airstrikes, even after the quake, while NGOs fear that certain areas could be denied vital supplies.
“Myanmar’s military has a longstanding practice of denying aid to areas where groups who resist it are active,” said Joe Freeman, a researcher with Amnesty Myanmar.
“It must immediately allow unimpeded access to all humanitarian organisations and remove administrative barriers delaying needs assessments.”
Read more:
Military regime targeting ‘civilian areas’ in ‘wake of disaster’
Myanmar earthquake leaves some areas almost completely destroyed
The quake was the strongest to hit the southeast Asian country in more than a century.
In neighbouring Thailand, rescuers are still scouring the ruins of a collapsed, unfinished skyscraper for any signs of life.
“There are about 70 bodies underneath, and we hope by some miracle one or two are still alive,” volunteer rescue leader Bin Bunluerit said.
Six human-shaped figures have been detected by scanners, said Bangkok’s deputy governor, Tavida Kamolvej.
Thirteen deaths have been confirmed at the building site, with 74 people still missing, while Thailand’s national number of dead stands at 20.
The father of a paramedic killed by Israel in Gaza has told Sky News he would have been on the mission to rescue wounded colleagues, but was ill that day and so his son went instead.
“It was supposed to be me, you know. I was on duty that night but fell ill and sent him in my place.”
Speaking at his son’s funeral, Hassan Abu Hileh said Israel is to blame for the death of Mohammed and the other 14 men.
Hassan Abu Hileh’s son Mohammed was killed when Israeli forces said they ‘opened fire on suspicious vehicles’
“We need protection from the international community. We need protection for medical teams. We are medics-soldiers of duty, not armed fighters. We carry out humanitarian work. If I see someone who needs medical attention, I’m obligated to serve them,” he said.
The bodies of the Red Crescent and United Nations workers went missing around eight days ago. Despite repeated requests to search for them, all denied by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), the UN eventually found 14 bodies buried under sand in a mass grave. One is still missing.
They were still wearing their uniforms.
Funerals took place on Monday for medics killed in Gaza. Pic: Reuters
The director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza has accused Israel of murdering the emergency workers. “We arrived at the scene of the crime to retrieve the bodies and found that all of them had been shot directly in the upper part of their bodies and buried,” said Dr Bashir Murad.
“The ambulances were also destroyed and buried.”
Dr Bashir Murad, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza, said the workers had been shot
The bodies were found in sand in the south of the Gaza Strip in what Jonathan Whittall, Gaza head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, called a “mass grave”, marked with the emergency light from a crushed ambulance.
Mr Whittall posted pictures and video of Red Crescent teams digging in the sand for the bodies and workers laying them out on the ground, covered in plastic sheets.
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Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has denied killing innocent medical workers and said Israeli forces opened fire on suspicious vehicles that were travelling without coordination and in an active combat zone.
“The IDF did not randomly attack an ambulance on March 23,” claimed a spokesman.
“Last Sunday, several uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals. IDF troops then opened fire at the suspected vehicles.
“Earlier that day, cars that did not belong to terrorists were coordinated and passed safely on the same route.”
Read more from Sky News:
What happened to the ceasefire?
Anti-Hamas chants at Gaza protest
We have asked the IDF why the bodies were found in a mass grave but have received no comment.
More than 400 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the UN.
According to the UN, at least 1,060 healthcare workers have been killed in the 18 months since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on 7 October 2023.
The UN is reducing its international staff in Gaza by a third because of safety concerns.
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