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

Published

3 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

Five people guilty in case of mistaken-identity double murder of teenage boys

Published

4 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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Five people guilty in case of mistaken-identity double murder of teenage boys

Four teenagers and a 45-year-old man have been found guilty of murdering two boys, aged 15 and 16, who were attacked with machetes in a case of mistaken identity.

The convictions follow a five-week trial at Bristol Crown Court.

The jury heard how Max Dixon and Mason Rist were killed in a case of mistaken identity on 27 January, after being wrongly identified as being responsible for a house attack in the Hartcliffe area of the city earlier that evening.

Antony Snook, 45, Riley Tolliver, 18, and three boys aged 15, 16 and 17 were all on trial each charged with two counts of murder.

As the jury foreman returned the guilty verdicts, none of the defendants showed any reaction from the dock, as they sat impassively and stared straight ahead.

The fatal stabbings in Knowle West lasted just 33 seconds – with both boys suffering what the court heard were “unsurvivable” injuries and “instant severe blood loss”.

Both died in hospital in the early hours of 28 January.

Detective Superintendent Gary Haskins, the case’s senior investigating officer from Avon and Somerset Police, told Sky News that Max and Mason had nothing to do with the house attack.

“Those boys were not known to their attackers, they were best friends, two beautiful children just going about their lives and attacked for no reason whatsoever,” he said.

Much of the prosecution’s case was based on CCTV and doorbell videos, including a camera on Mason’s own house which captured footage of the knife attack against him.

The pair were seen leaving Mason’s home at around 11.15pm and were going for a pizza.

Prosecutor Ray Tully KC told the jury that the boys were set upon by the group who had been travelling in Snook’s Audi Q2.

He said the group were “out for revenge”, “acting as a pack” to hunt down those responsible and “tooled up” with fearsome weapons.

After the attackers fled, Max and Mason were left bleeding in the street.

The investigation involved more than 230 police officers and staff – with thousands of pieces of evidence analysed.

Hundreds mourned victims at school

The teenage victims were in year 11 together at the Oasis Academy John Williams secondary school and were preparing to sit their GCSEs this summer.

The school’s headteacher Victoria Boomer-Clark told Sky News that everyone rallied to support fellow pupils and staff.

She said: “After the boys were tragically murdered, for us first and foremost we were thinking about the families and how they were coping with the absolute tragedy and shock of that.

“I can remember trying to prepare for that Monday morning and my memories now are how exceptionally strong our young people are and how we have a real sense of community.

“Unbeknownst to us the young people had arranged to hold a vigil on the playground during breaktime on that first Monday. We had hundreds of young people and staff coming together in silence.”

Ms Boomer-Clark said the boys would have attended school prom this summer.

“We had a wall that was lit up in red for Mason and Liverpool football club and a wall in blue for Park Knowle Football Club,” she said. “The year group came together and supported each other through it.”

Detective had never seen ‘horrific’ weapons before

The murders came before a new law was introduced banning ownership of zombie-style knives and machetes.

Detective Superintendent Gary Haskins said: “The weapons used in the attack on Mason and Max were simply horrific.

“I’ve been a detective for many, many years and I’ve had the misfortune of investigating some serious offences.

“In all my service I’ve not seen a weapon like the one we saw used on those two boys.

“There is no place for a weapon of that type in society for any reason whatsoever.”

The detective praised the boy’s families, who attended court throughout the trial.

He added: “I’m humbled by the families involved in this investigation. They’ve been at court every day, they’ve seen things at court that no parent should ever be exposed to. They saw the attacks on their children, but they maintain their dignity, their courage and their love for their family.

“How can you replace what they’ve lost? They’ve lost two beautiful sons, and I can only hope that the verdicts will bring some form of closure. It will never close completely.”

Snook will be sentenced on 19 November at Bristol Crown Court.

The other four defendants will be sentenced on 16 December following the preparation of pre-sentence reports.

Police are continuing to investigate the Hartcliffe house attack and search for those responsible.

UK

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September – slower than expected

Published

6 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September - slower than expected

The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the quarter.

The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.

Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.

And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.

Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Improving economic growth is at the heart of everything I am seeking to achieve, which is why I am not satisfied with these numbers.

“At my budget, I took the difficult choices to fix the foundations and stabilise our public finances.

“Now we are going to deliver growth through investment and reform to create more jobs and more money in people’s pockets, get the NHS back on its feet, rebuild Britain and secure our borders in a decade of national renewal,” Ms Reeves added.

The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.

The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.

The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.

It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.

The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.

The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.

UK

Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is ‘growing in popularity’

Published

6 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is 'growing in popularity'

“If you are a member of something, it means you’ve accepted membership. Anything with ‘ship’ on the end, it’s giving you a clue: it’s telling you that’s maritime law. That means you’ve entered into a contract.”

This isn’t your standard legal argument and it is becoming clear that I am dealing with an unusual way of looking at the world.

I’m in the library of a hotel in Leicestershire, a wood-panelled room with warm lighting, and Pete Stone, better known as Sovereign Pete, is explaining how “the system” works. Mr Stone is in his mid-50, bald with a goatee beard and wearing, as he always does for public appearances, a black T-shirt and black jeans.

With us are six other people, mainly dressed in neat jumpers. They’re members of the Sovereign Project (SP), an organisation Mr Stone founded in 2020, which, he says, now has more than 20,000 paying members.

As arcane as this may sound, it represents a worldview that is becoming more influential – and causing problems for authorities. Loosely, they’re defined as “sovereign citizens” or “freemen on the land”.

Their fundamental point is that nobody is required to obey laws they have not specifically consented to – especially when it comes to tax. They have hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Telegram.

Increasingly, they are coming into conflict with governments and the law. Sovereign citizens have ended up in the High Court in recent months, challenging the legalities of tax bills and losing on both occasions.

In October, four people were sentenced to prison for the attempted kidnapping of an Essex coroner, who they saw as acting unlawfully. The self-appointed “sheriffs” attempted to force entry to the court, one of them demanding: “You guys have been practising fraud!”

The Sovereign Project is not connected to any of those cases, nor does it promote any sort of political action, let alone violence.

Instead, they are focused on issues like questioning the obligation to pay taxes, as Mr Stone explains, referencing the feudal system that operated in the Middle Ages.

“Do you know about the feudal system when people were slaves and were forced to pay tax?” he asks.

“Now, unless the feudal system still operates today, and we still have serfs and slaves, then the only way that you can pay taxes is to have a contract, you have to agree to it and consent to it.”

Another member, Karl Deans, a 43-year-old property developer who runs the SP’s social media, says: “We’re not here to dodge tax.”

Local government tends to be a target beyond just demands for tax. Mr Stone speaks of “council employee crimes”.

I ask whether, considering the attempted kidnapping in Essex, there is a danger that people will listen to these accusations of crimes by councils and act on them.

“Well that’s proved,” Mr Stone says. “We only deal with facts.”

Evidence suggests this approach is becoming an issue for councils across the UK, as people search online for ways to avoid paying tax.

Sky News analysis shows that out of 374 council websites covering Great Britain, at least 172 (46%) have pages responding to sovereign citizen arguments around avoiding paying council tax. They point out that liability for council tax is not dependent on consent, or a contract, and instead relies on the Local Government Finance Act 1992, voted on by Parliament.

But the Sovereign Project’s worldview extends beyond council tax. It is deeply anti-establishment, at times conspiratorial. Stone suggests the summer riots may have been organised by the government.

“The sovereign fraternity operates above all of this,” he says. “We look down at the world like a chessboard. We see what’s going on.”

He explains that, really, the UK government isn’t actually in control: there is a shadow government above them.

“These are the people who control government,” he explains.

“A lot of people say this could be the crown council of 13, this could be a series of Italian families.”

Professor Christine Sarteschi, an expert in sovereign citizens at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says she’s worried about the threat sovereign citizens may pose to the rule of law, especially in the US where guns are readily available.

“The movement is growing and that’s evidenced by seeing it in different countries and hearing about different cases. The concern is that they will become emboldened and commit acts of violence,” she says.

“Because sovereigns truly believe in their ideas and if they feel very aggrieved by, you know, the government or whomever they think is oppressing them or controlling them… they can become emotionally involved.

“That emotional involvement sometimes leads to violence in some cases, or the belief that they have the power to attempt to overthrow a government in some capacity.”

Much of this seems to be based on an underlying and familiar frustration at the state of this country and of the world.

Mr Stone echoes some of the characteristic arguments also made by the right, that there is “two-tier policing”, that refugees arriving in the UK are “young men of fighting age”, that the government is using “forced immigration to destroy the country”.

Another SP member, retired investment banker David Hopgood, 61, says: “I firmly believe it is the true Englishman – and woman – of this country – that has the power to unlock this madness that’s happening in the West.

“We’ve got the Magna Carta – all these checks and balances. We just need to pack up, go down to Parliament and say: It’s time to dismiss you. You’re not fit for purpose.”

The members of the Sovereign Project are unfailingly patient and polite in explaining their understanding of the world.

But there is no doubt they hold a deeply radical view, one that is apparently growing in popularity.