Dr Rebecca Tidy

The Sun • 3rd December 2024

Three years on run was like a movie - but I'm glad I was caught, says kingpin

FOR years, drugs kingpin Alex Male was one of Britain’s most wanted criminals and led authorities a merry dance across the world. The heavily-tattooed bodybuilder, nicknamed Viking Don, posted social media snaps with beautiful women at exotic ­locations as he dodged justice over a £4.7million cocaine empire.

The Scottish Sun • 5th October 2024

Jamie 'Iceman' Stevenson claimed he was like victims of Post Office scandal

CRIME boss Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson tried to escape justice by comparing his drugs plots case to victims of the Post Office scandal, we can reveal today. Lawyers for the cartel chief, 59, claimed damning evidence from hacked EncroChat phone messages was as unreliable as faulty Horizon software that led to the wrongful convictions of hundreds of subpostmasters.

leafie • 14th June 2024

Afghan farmers are benefiting from the Taliban’s drug ban - leafie

“With the banning of opium, the price went up to the sky: my life is better with this order of Shaikh Sahib” Afghanistan has a long and colourful relationship with psychoactive plants. It was a popular destination on the Hippie Trail in the 1950s and 60s, thanks to its famous cannabis culture. Rural dwellers discovered that a shrub covering the country’s mountains, ephedra, is easily converted into crystal meth and a potent weight-loss drug named ephedrine. But the opium poppy is – arguably –...

Leafie • 21st March 2024

Incognito: The darknet market that stole everyone’s money, then started blackmailing dealers Exit

Byline Times • 21st February 2024

'The National Crime Agency’s Investigations Boss Was Sacked Over Leaks – Casting Doubt on Hundreds of Convictions'

The dismissal of one of Britain’s former top crime fighters could bring the safety of convictions relating to police-infiltrated encrypted phone network Encrochat into question, argues Dr Rebecca Tidy.

Byline Times • 5th January 2024

Prince William is Radiation Prison Landlord – Parts of UK’s Oldest Jail Evacuated

Free from fear or favour No tracking. No cookiesInmates at HMP Dartmoor are being moved to other prisons due to potentially dangerous levels of cancer-causing radon detected in some cells. The Duke of Cornwall is their landlord Ninety-six inmates of Britain’s oldest prison – owned by Prince William – are being evacuated over fears of radon poisoning, Byline Times can reveal. Cells in two of the six wings at 215-year-old HMP Dartmoor, which the Government rents from the Prince’s £1bn Duchy...

Leafie • 19th April 2023

An ode to the Hippie Trail: A cannabis-steeped pilgrimage

Huck • 19th August 2022

Harsh drug policing at festivals is endangering lives

Think of a stereotypical British festival, and a number of images might enter your head. Typically, they revolve around a messy weekend of drugs, warm cider, overpriced food stalls, hanging out with a load of mates, muddy fields, and grim loos. But if all this is synonymous with the British festival scene, then so, too, are the security guards and drug detection dogs.

Huck • 1st August 2022

The deadly rise of Tasers in British policing

On 7 June 2022, a 41-year-old Black man was tasered repeatedly by a Metropolitan Police officer on Chelsea Bridge. Oladeji Adeyemi Omishore, from Pimlico, fell to the ground and appeared to drop something, after receiving the five-second electric shock, a video shows.

Huck • 22nd July 2022

‘Tortured in sweatboxes’: Inside Britain’s prisons during the heatwave

Last Sunday (17 July), a young man in his 20s went into cardiac arrest in HMP Birmingham at 1 am. According to his 27-year-old girlfriend, Kay, he’d originally had a fairly simple throat infection, but the extreme heat caused his airway to become dry and constricted.

Green Queen Magazine • 6th May 2022

Inside the first cannabis ceremony in Guernsey

This year, plant medicine practitioner Lucia Pagliarone led Guernsey’s first cannabis ceremony. The event took place on 20th April, in celebration of the annual – increasingly commercialised – cannabis celebration, 4/20.

Vice News • 4th May 2022

The Wildest Excuses People Gave After Getting Busted with Drugs

“We once found heroin stashed inside a shopping bag of Cornish pasties – a granny from Bodmin told us she’d picked up the wrong bag."

Volteface • 23rd March 2022

Europe's Most Lucrative Drug Market Isn't Where You Think It Is...

This British tax haven has proven to be a lucrative destination for criminals over the years.

Vice News • 18th March 2022

Cops Tried to Claim a Smuggler’s £90 Drugs Stash Was Worth Nearly £1m

A drug smuggler was told his £90 stash of drugs was worth nearly £1 million – because he had travelled for three hours on a ferry.

Huck Magazine • 8th February 2022

‘Anonymous police accounts’ are inciting Twitter pile-ons

Twitter users claiming to be police officers have been responsible for launching sustained attacks on other accounts.

Huck • 11th October 2021

Guernsey’s drug laws ruin lives, so why is big business allowed to…

Summer Bienvenu, a 21-year-old single mum of a toddler, sat in silence as the courtroom waited for 72-year-old Judge Russell Finch’s verdict. She had been charged with class B drug supply after police found 69 grams of cannabis, a bong and a set of scales at a house party – attended by five people – on the island of Guernsey in 2020. The 38-weeks pregnant woman gasped in horror as the semi-retired Judge said that she was sentenced to two years and four months in prison.

Huck • 30th September 2021

Why Taliban rule is causing a surge in extra-strong heroin in the UK

Global drug traffickers and law enforcement officials have been watching the Taliban’s rapid advance across Afghanistan with bated breath. The offensive began in May 2021 when US troops withdrew from the country. Taliban and allied militant groups gradually negotiated, bribed and  fought their way to power across the rural provinces.

Huck • 3rd August 2021

Young ex-drug traffickers on living with a conviction

JMV felt his heart pounding in his chest as he walked past the Guernsey Border Force desk, trying to look like a normal ferry passenger. Once he’d passed he didn’t dare look back He kept walking, and gradually the adrenaline was replaced by feelings of elation and relief, as he’d managed to sneak 250 grams of MDMA onto the second-largest Channel Island.

Huck • 2nd July 2021

Death behind bars: How the prison system fails inmates at the end of…

Struggling for breath, 80-year old Duncan McGee tried to haul himself up off the cold concrete floor, but it was no use, as a searing pain prevented him from moving. It was 5:01am in September 2019, and he’d just fallen out of his bed in HMP Doncaster’s Vulnerable Prisoner Unit. Eventually, he managed to maneuver himself into a position where he could pull the cord to sound the cell bell – however, the prison officer who arrived told him there was nobody free to escort him to hospital.

Vice News • 1st July 2021

These Are the Code Words Used by Top-Level Drug Traffickers

Despite persistent reports to the contrary, the vast majority of Encrochat users remained security conscious, and used heavily coded and guarded communication to discuss their business affairs.