A British tourist has told of his holiday hell after he was arrested in Tunisia when bungling cops mistook him for a convicted cigarette smuggler.
James Colley, 57, known as Jim, jetted off on a package holiday to the North African nation with wife Louise Colley, 51, on August 2 to celebrate his retirement.
But he was quizzed by armed police upon his arrival at at Enfidha-Hammamet International Airport and then told to report to a court in the capital, Tunis.
Baffled Jim later learnt that cops were actually looking for a man called James Coyle, convicted in his absence of smuggling cigarettes into the country in 2012.
The panicked couple spent the rest of their holiday fighting the bewildering charges.
They had to fork out a further £800 on three eight-hour round trips to Tunis and lawyers fees.
James Colley, 57, known as Jim, jetted off on a package holiday to the North African nation with wife Louise Colley, 51, on August 2 to celebrate his retirement
He was quizzed by armed police upon his arrival at at Enfidha-Hammamet International Airport and then told to report to a court in the capital, Tunis
When Jim finally went before a judge on the last day of their ‘holiday’ the case was dropped against him in seconds, because the charges were ‘too old’.
Speaking about his ordeal, dad-of-three Jim said: ‘We still don’t know if it was a scam to make money. Were the police involved? The passport people?
‘I’m quite a calm person, but honestly, you don’t argue with someone with a gun* You’ve got no idea – are they trigger-happy? It was absolutely terrifying.
‘I’ve never had any mental health problems in my life, but honestly, this was mentally draining.’
Louise, a community staff nurse, who was by Jim’s side throughout their ‘holiday from hell’, has now warned Brits not to head to Tunisia.
She said: ‘Don’t go. It sounds terrible as there are some nice people over there, but it’s just not safe – I just don’t think it’s safe for any British tourists to go at the minute.
‘It could have been our kids. They could have been on holiday, and it could have happened to them. They might not have coped as well as we did.
‘We didn’t know if Jim was going to get locked up or what the hell was going to go on.’
‘It was completely terrifying. It should have never happened. I don’t know why we’ve been picked on. It’s total corruption over there.’
The couple, from Newcastle, booked their week-long package holiday following the Jim’s retirement as a Nissan car plant worker earlier this year.
They paid £1,400 to stay at the five-star rated El Mouradi hotel, in Mahdia.
But they never got to enjoy its facilities after Jim was was stopped by police at the airport and questioned for around four hours.
The couple, from Newcastle, booked their week-long package holiday following the Jim’s retirement as a Nissan car plant worker earlier this year
He said: ‘They kept on taking my passport away and asking us the same two questions: Had I been to Tunisia before and where did I work?
‘I said I’d ‘only been once on my honeymoon in 2009.’ They didn’t believe us, they said, ‘You’ve been before.’
‘They had guns, and you don’t argue with someone with a gun.
‘They then got an interpreter down, and he basically said, ‘You’re going to have an invitation to appear in court’.’
Jim and Louise made it to their hotel in the early hours of August 3 after they were forced to pay £95 for a local taxi ride.
On August 5, at 4am, they paid a local man to drive them four hours to Tunis along the Trans-African Highway in a beaten-up VW polo for the court appearance.
James remembered how the building looked like a ‘1960s bank’ with ‘paper files piled high everywhere’ and all the staff smoking.
After he arrived, he was presented with a court document, which bizarrely named him incorrectly as ‘James Coyle’.
Jim added: ‘In this court, they said ‘English?’ I said yes. And then they said, ‘You need to sign this’… But it had the wrong name on it.
‘They took us into another room, and there was a superior guy, and he said, ‘So you are innocent then?’ I thought that would be the end of it.
‘But he said, ‘You need to come to the police station tomorrow to hand this form in.’ I said, where’s the police station?’ It was in Tunis again.’
The couple went to the ‘sweltering’ local police station the next day – with James then told he needed to appear before a judge at the courthouse on August 8.
A local English-speaking lawyer, who they had approached, first said she could represent them in court for £530.
But they later secured the services of another lawyer for £130 after they gave a court usher a backhander for their help, they claim, and went before a panel of judges.
Fearful Jim said he was unsure which way the case was going to go and was deeply worried he may be fined or end up in prison
Jim added: ‘I was sitting in the public gallery. There were three judges.
‘The doors opened from the side and they started dragging prisoners from the jails out downstairs in handcuffs.
‘Our driver, he’d come in to interpret for us, and he was saying, ‘That man, he tried to have sex with a lady when she didn’t want it, this man beat his mother up.’
‘I was the last one, even though we’d paid the usher to be in first.
‘I had to stand with my hands behind my back, my head bowed in front of these three judges. There were police officers with their guns.
‘I got called, so I stood up and the lawyers stood up.’
Fearful Jim said he was unsure which way the case was going to go and was deeply worried he may be fined or end up in prison.
But within 30 seconds, he said one of the judges had ‘waved their hand in the air’ and an usher came and whispered to him: ‘It’s all over, you’re free to go.’
The astonished couple later learned from their hastily formed legal team that the case should never have gone ahead due to the age of the offence.
Jim said: ‘Basically, what they knew all along was that the case was for cigarette smuggling in 2012. This James Coyle was convicted in his absence.
‘Because the case was over five years old, it just got thrown out anyway – not the fact that it wasn’t even me, mistaken identity.’
The Tunisian Embassy in London has been contacted for comment.
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