Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Grandad’s Spanish jail hell over drugs lord mix-up
Crook used innocent Eddie’s ID as alias
A BRITISH holidaymaker has told how he was locked up in a Spanish jail for eight nights after being mistaken for a drugs kingpin.
Great-grandad Eddie Gossage, 68, was handcuffed in his hotel room before being hauled off to court then prison by police who thought he was fugitive Michael David Phillips.
His identity had been stolen by the 63-year-old crook and used as an alias.
Eddie was apprehended by border guards at Palma airport in Majorca when he arrived with wife Brenda, 70.
After being quizzed, the pair were allowed to continue to their hotel in Magaluf.
But next morning they were woken by police hammering on their door. Eddie said: “They just said, ‘Get dressed’ and I was handcuffed.
“My wife was very upset, she was screaming and shouting. I was saying, ‘What is happening?’”
Shocked Eddie was taken to a station where officers photographed and fingerprinted him while insisting he was Phillips, who escaped from Hatfield jail, South Yorks, in 2013.
He was taken to court the next morning and told he was on Interpol’s Most Wanted list. Eddie added: “I kept saying, ‘No, I’m Edward Gossage.’”
Despite his protests, he was sent to Palma prison. He said: “There was a fingerprint machine. I thought, ‘They’ve only got to email them [fingerprints] there [the UK] and I’ll be out. It’s just a massive mistake.”
Eddie shared a cell the first night with a Ukrainian prisoner, who spoke no English. He was given an ID card which had his photo with the name Michael Phillips printed alongside. He added: “I said, ‘That’s my face, mate, but not my name, I’m not signing that.’”
The jailer told him: “In here, you’re Michael Phillips.” Distraught Brenda had contacted their daughters Amanda, 47, and Jenny, 39, who flew out to be with her. The three women visited Eddie in jail but were not allowed to hug him as he was behind a glass partition.
The tearful dad said: “I was trying to reassure them, saying, ‘I’m sound,’ trying to be hard. But I was thinking, ‘Please, let me out.’” His family contacted a Spanish solicitor and the British consulate in Majorca. Amanda said: “I told them, ‘If you don’t get him out, he will come out in a box. He is 68. He has never been in prison. He will not last in there.’” Eddie was finally released after the consulate raised concerns with the National Crime Agency, the body in London that issued the European Arrest Warrant for Phillips, and officers spotted the mistake.
The railway worker, from Kirkby, Merseyside, had an English breakfast and a pint to celebrate with his daughters, wife and son, Paul, 32, before flying home. Eddie has suffered ill-health since returning home and has been referred to a counsellor over flashbacks.
He now wants to know who was responsible for last month’s blunder that put an innocent man behind bars.
The NCA insisted it was the fault of Spanish police, who distributed the real wanted crook’s details.
Phillips, who was seven years into a 16-year sentence for supplying heroin when he absconded on a temporary release, is still on the run.