‘It’s a very lonely world’: The Brits who go missing abroad

Published

10 months ago

August 31, 2024

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“His room is still the same” and “there’s always a missing chair around the table”, says Pip, whose younger brother Sanjiv Kundi was 41 when he vanished in Paris 11 years ago.

She has visited the French capital many times since he left the family home in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, for a week’s holiday – always wondering if she will see his face in the crowd.

Sanjiv was the “apple of my parents’ eye”, she says, their only son surrounded by four sisters, but he struggled with his mental health in the years before his disappearance.

Distinctive looking, standing at around 6ft 2inch inches tall with dark, greying curly hair and a beard, Sanjiv was wearing glasses, a heavy brown, three-quarter length coat and brown cargo trousers when he took the 4.22pm Eurostar from St Pancras.

He arrived at Gare du Nord station on the evening of 25 September 2013 but what happened next remains a mystery.

He is believed to have returned to the station the following day to buy a ticket home for 1 October but there’s no available CCTV footage, and his cards and mobile phone have not been used since he went missing.

The impact on Sanjiv’s family has been devastating, his parents now in their 80s, his nephews all grown up, are still no closer to getting any answers.

Pip wonders if he’s been a victim of crime, if something sinister has happened to him, or if he’s decided to live that way.

‘Somebody somewhere knows something’

If he has, she wants him to know he’s “deeply missed” and his family just want to know he’s safe – but she does not think he intentionally wanted to go missing.

“In this day and age, with all the technology we have, I can’t understand why nobody saw my brother that day,” says Pip.

“Somebody somewhere knows something.”

Her family is one of the many living with the nightmare of searching for a loved one who has gone missing abroad.

The LBT Global charity, which helped Jay Slater’s relatives after he disappeared while on holiday in Tenerife, says it gets about 3,000 enquiries a year and takes on about 300 to 400 of those cases.

But only a fraction get the same type of publicity as the 19-year-old, whose body was found in a ravine 29 days after he went missing, or television doctor Michael Mosley, 67, who was found dead four days after he disappeared on the Greek island of Symi.

Middle-aged men and those with mental health issues tend not to generate the same headlines as the young, photogenic or famous, says Matt Searle, LBT Global’s chief executive.

But the “extraordinary” case of Madeleine McCann, who was aged three when she disappeared from her holiday apartment in Portugal on 3 May 2007, set a “very public benchmark” for what people expect.

‘A missing foreigner is bottom of the pile’

Police in the UK have a duty to take statements and pass the information through Interpol to the relevant foreign police force, but they do not have any jurisdiction to carry out an investigation.

There are currently 69 Interpol yellow notices – the global police alerts issued to help locate people, including cases of suspected kidnappings and abductions – for British people, including Madeleine.

Most families will not get much support from the authorities and in some countries, “a missing foreigner is absolutely bottom of the pile”, says Matt, while those who go out to search themselves may not even be able to read the road signs.

“It’s a very lonely world for people who’ve got someone missing overseas,” he says.

“A huge part of every operation is explaining why the British police, the prime minister, the foreign secretary, aren’t all flying out there,” he says.

“It just doesn’t happen. You have to explain that the British government can’t do that. The Met Police aren’t going to be flying out in helicopters, going to look for them, you know, we’re not going to get any of that.

“But what we do is say, depending on what the case needs, we could try and find a local guy with a drone, mobilise local search and rescue, or fundraise to get on-the-ground support.”

‘We’ve been to the morgues’

Pip’s family has had virtually no contact with the French police and a year after Sanjiv went missing his file was shoved in a drawer, she says, so they were left to drive the search themselves.

She went to areas in Paris that were popular with rough sleepers, handed out leaflets and posters and appeared on French radio and TV.

“We’ve been to the morgues. We’ve been to the hospital,” she says. “And you can’t believe you still can’t find a scrap of anything to tell us what happened when he left that station.”

Pip has been assisted by the Missing People charity. It says 170,000 people a year, or one every 90 seconds, are reported missing in the UK, but lists the details of just 38 people missing abroad.

They include the high-profile cases of Madeleine McCann and Ben Needham, who was 21 months old when he disappeared on the Greek island of Kos in 1991.

While Sanjiv has attracted some publicity over the years, the coverage of the famous cases sometimes makes Pip think: “Why not my brother?”

Around 80% of cases resolved

LBT Global, which specialises in helping families whose relatives are missing abroad, has around 860 open cases, some going back 20 years.

The charity is able to tell around 80% of the people it works with what happened. Around half of those are happy endings, says Matt.

Alex Batty went missing aged 11 in 2017 after his mother Melanie Batty, who was not his legal guardian, took him on a pre-arranged trip to Spain with his grandfather.

They lived “off-grid” leading a nomadic lifestyle in southern France for six years until Alex made the decision to walk out and was found walking in darkness carrying his skateboard by a French delivery driver near Toulouse.

He was reunited with his grandmother and legal guardian Susan Caruana at his former home in Oldham, Greater Manchester, just before Christmas last year.

In other cases, a missing person is found in prison overseas or dead.

“Even being able to tell them that someone has died can be a relief for them, because at least they can move on with a grieving journey then, and we can make arrangements to repatriate the body, and they can have a burial,” says Matt.

“And it’s surprising how often a family will say, ‘I wish I knew they were dead rather than just not knowing at all’.”

Harder still, he says, is telling a family they are alive and well but they do not want to speak to them ever again. The reasons for this can vary but typically include a family breakdown, criminal activity within a family or they just want to leave their old life behind.

‘Never lose hope’

In those cases, Matt has to tell the family: “I’m sorry, but we can’t search for them anymore. They told me they don’t want to be found and they don’t want to be in touch.”

But living in long-term limbo like Pip’s family is also incredibly hard.

They have gone through all the stages of bereavement, from shock to denial, to depression and anger at “why isn’t anybody looking for him?”

And when a new high-profile missing person’s case like Jay Slater hits the headlines it “brings it all back”.

“Every person out there whose family member is missing could almost feel and touch the emotion that [family] was going through,” says Pip.

LBT Global’s oldest cases date back to 2004 or 2005 but Matt says his charity has located people who have been missing for more than 20 years.

“The message to families is never lose hope,” he says.

Missing People runs a free and confidential helpline for those affected by a disappearance. You can text or call them on 116 000 or send an email to 11600@missingpeople.org.uk.

UK

US-UK trade deal ‘done’, says Trump as he meets Starmer at G7

Published

5 hours ago

June 17, 2025

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US-UK trade deal 'done', says Trump as he meets Starmer at G7

The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.

The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”

Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.

“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.

Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.

However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.

What exactly does trade deal being ‘done’ mean?

The government says the US “has committed” to removing tariffs (taxes on imported goods) on UK aerospace goods, such as engines and aircraft parts, which currently stand at 10%.

That is “expected to come into force by the end of the month”.

Tariffs on car imports will drop from 27.5% to 10%, the government says, which “saves car manufacturers hundreds of millions a year, and protects tens of thousands of jobs”.

The White House says there will be a quote of 100,000 cars eligible for import at that level each year.

But on steel, the story is a little more complicated.

The UK is the only country exempted from the global 50% tariff rate on steel – which means the UK rate remains at the original level of 25%.

That tariff was expected to be lifted entirely, but the government now says it will “continue to go further and make progress towards 0% tariffs on core steel products as agreed”.

The White House says the US will “promptly construct a quota at most-favoured-nation rates for steel and aluminium articles”.

Other key parts of the deal include import and export quotas for beef – and the government is keen to emphasise that “any US imports will need to meet UK food safety standards”.

There is no change to tariffs on pharmaceuticals for the moment, and the government says “work will continue to protect industry from any further tariffs imposed”.

The White House says they “committed to negotiate significantly preferential treatment outcomes”.

Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”

He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.

“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”

Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.

As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.

Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”

The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.

Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.

In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.

Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.

UK

Whitehall officials tried to cover up grooming scandal in 2011, Dominic Cummings says

Published

11 hours ago

June 16, 2025

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Whitehall officials tried to cover up grooming scandal in 2011, Dominic Cummings says

Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.

Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.

Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled

The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.

In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.

The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.

Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.

Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.

“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’

“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…

“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”

The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.

A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.

One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.

There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.

Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.

Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal

Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.

He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”

He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.

Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.

“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.

The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.

UK

Flawed data used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’, Baroness Casey finds

Published

14 hours ago

June 16, 2025

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Flawed data used repeatedly to dismiss claims about 'Asian grooming gangs', Baroness Casey finds

Flawed data has been used repeatedly to dismiss claims about “Asian grooming gangs”, Baroness Louise Casey has said in a new report, as she called for a new national inquiry.

The government has accepted her recommendations to introduce compulsory collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in grooming cases, and for a review of police records to launch new criminal investigations into historic child sexual exploitation cases.

Politics latest: Yvette Cooper reveals details of grooming gangs report

The crossbench peer has produced an audit of sexual abuse carried out by grooming gangs in England and Wales, after she was asked by the prime minister to review new and existing data, including the ethnicity and demographics of these gangs.

In her report, she has warned authorities that children need to be seen “as children” and called for a tightening of the laws around the age of consent so that any penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16 is classified as rape. This is “to reduce uncertainty which adults can exploit to avoid or reduce the punishments that should be imposed for their crimes”, she added.

Baroness Casey said: “Despite the age of consent being 16, we have found too many examples of child sexual exploitation criminal cases being dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges where a 13 to 15-year-old had been ‘in love with’ or ‘had consented to’ sex with the perpetrator.”

The peer has called for a nationwide probe into the exploitation of children by gangs of men.

She has not recommended another over-arching inquiry of the kind conducted by Professor Alexis Jay, and suggests the national probe should be time-limited.

The national inquiry will direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the inquiry’s “purpose is to challenge what the audit describes as continued denial, resistance and legal wrangling among local agencies”.

On the issue of ethnicity, Baroness Casey said police data was not sufficient to draw conclusions as it had been “shied away from”, and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators.

‘Flawed data’

However, having examined local data in three police force areas, she found “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation, as well as in the significant number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity identified in local reviews and high-profile child sexual exploitation prosecutions across the country, to at least warrant further examination”.

She added: “Despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young white girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.

“Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue.

“This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities and plays into the hands of those who want to exploit it to sow division.”

The baroness hit out at the failure of policing data and intelligence for having multiple systems which do not communicate with each other.

She also criticised “an ambivalent attitude to adolescent girls both in society and in the culture of many organisations”, too often judging them as adults.

‘Deep-rooted failure’

Responding to Baroness Casey’s review, Ms Yvette Cooper told the House of Commons: “The findings of her audit are damning.

“At its heart, she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children. A continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, from exploitation, and serious violence.

She added: “Baroness Casey found ‘blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions’ all played a part in this collective failure.”

Ms Cooper said she will take immediate action on all 12 recommendations from the report, adding: “We cannot afford more wasted years repeating the same mistakes or shouting at each other across this House rather than delivering real change.”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “After months of pressure, the prime minister has finally accepted our calls for a full statutory national inquiry into the grooming gangs.

“We must remember that this is not a victory for politicians, especially the ones like the home secretary, who had to be dragged to this position, or the prime minister. This is a victory for the survivors who have been calling for this for years.”

Ms Badenoch added: “The prime minister’s handling of this scandal is an extraordinary failure of leadership. His judgement has once again been found wanting.

“Since he became prime minister, he and the home secretary dismissed calls for an inquiry because they did not want to cause a stir.

“They accused those of us demanding justice for the victims of this scandal as, and I quote, ‘jumping on a far right bandwagon’, a claim the prime minister’s official spokesman restated this weekend – shameful.”

The government has promised new laws to protect children and support victims so they “stop being blamed for the crimes committed against them”.

It is also launching new police operations and a new national inquiry to direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures.

There will also be new ethnicity data and research “so we face up to the facts on exploitation and abuse,” the home secretary said.