Famous Cases Of People Who Were Arrested Abroad (And What Happened To Them)

In 2016, 21-year-old University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier was arrested while on a tour of North Korea. His offense? Trying to swipe a propaganda poster from his hotel. 

In the early morning hours of January 1, grainy CCTV footage showed a person North Korean officials claimed was Warmbier removing the framed poster in a restricted area of the hotel. It wasn't until the following morning at the airport, as Warmbier and his fellow travelers tried to leave the country, that he was detained.

Warmbier eventually pled guilty to the attempted theft, reading from a handwritten note that a Methodist Church had pushed him to take the poster as a “trophy,” with the intention “to harm the work ethic and motivation of the Korean people.” In his admittance of guilt, there were many things that didn't add up - including the fact that Warmbier was Jewish, not Methodist. 

Seemingly wanting to make an example of Warmbier, the North Korean officials sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor. Disrespecting a propaganda poster is considered a serious offense in North Korea; in one instance a janitor was reportedly prosecuted for inadvertently bumping into a framed poster and breaking it.

After Warmbier was sent to his imprisonment, his parents desperately pleaded for his return. Diplomatic officials between the two countries continued to negotiate Warmbier's release, until 2017, when North Korean representatives revealed that Warmbier was not conscious. A medical team was dispatched to North Korea to bring Warmbier back to the US.

In June of 2017, the Warmbiers received word that their son was finally coming home. However, it was not a joyful reunion. Tragically, Warmbier was in a comatose state with severe brain damage. His parents described his legs and arms as “disfigured," and said it looked like his teeth had been rearranged by a pair of pliers. 

North Korean officials said Warmbier's medical state was due to botulism, and he fell into a coma following a reaction to a sleeping pill. American doctors found no signs of botulism. While the Warmbier family maintained that their son was physically tortured, medical examiner reports didn't find evidence to support this claim, instead determining Warmbier's state was caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. This conclusion still leaves what exactly happened to Warmbier unknown.

After being told their son would never regain consciousness, Warmbier's parents elected to remove his feeding tube. Just six days after returning home, Otto Warmbier passed at the age of 22. 

Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has a very strict zero-tolerance drug policy. So much so, that even the tiniest amount of an illicit substance can lead to a hefty prison sentence. 

This was the case for an unlucky British man named Andrew Brown in 2008, whose luggage was searched by the Dubai airport officials. On the bottom of one of Brown's shoes (which was in his suitcase), the officials found 0.003 grams (0.0001 ounce) of weed. For reference, that weighs less than a grain of sugar.

This was enough evidence for the Dubai police to sentence the man to four years in prison. He served about six months before being pardoned and released by the head of Dubai's prison system. Of the charges against him, the father of two said,

Am I responsible for the ground beneath my feet?… Who looks at the soles of their shoes?

John McAfee is known for his popular, namesake antivirus computer software. Yet, his name has been soiled by his possible connection to many transgressions - including running a meth lab, suspicious activity with underage girls, and a cryptocurrency-selling scheme. 

However, the most infamous offense he's been linked to was the murder of his neighbor in Belize, an American named Gregory Faull. Faull openly disliked McAfee's dogs, who were often unleashed and dangerous, according to Faull. One day, McAfee's dogs were found dead - and coincidentally, Faull was found shot to death the very next day. 

Rather than try to clear his name, McAfee fled to Guatemala - where he was quickly arrested for illegally entering the country. McAfee said he ran because he was worried that whoever killed Faull had actually wanted to eliminate McAfee. 

McAfee was deported back to the U.S. (after faking two heart attacks), where Faull's daughter successfully filed a wrongful death lawsuit against McAfee. While he was ordered to pay Faull's family $25 million, he refused.

On a trip to Spain, McAfee was apprehended for crimes related to fraudulent cryptocurrency sales. While in a Spanish prison, McAfee committed suicide in June 2021. 

Seven-time WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner went to Russia in February of 2022 to play basketball in the off-season of the WNBA. (Many female basketball players do this as they can earn two to three times what they make in the United States.)

When she arrived in the country, airport officials claimed to have found vape cartridges in her luggage containing hashish oil, a concentrated form of cannabis. Griner was charged with large-scale drug transportation - which can have a 10-year sentence. In May, the US government declared Griner was “wrongfully detained,” a classification shift that signaled it would work for her release regardless of how her case played out in Russia's legal system.

In July 2022, Griner's trial began and she pled guilty to the charges while maintaining she did not have criminal intent. In her testimony, Griner said her rights were not explained to her at the time of her arrest, and that the interpreter did not provide full translations while she was being questioned and told to sign documents.

In August 2022, the United States government proposed a prisoner swap, offering to free convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for the release of Griner and former US Marine Paul Whelan. Russian officials reportedly sought the release of an additional prisoner, Vadim Krasikov, who is imprisoned in Germany for murder. According to a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council:

Holding two wrongfully detained Americans hostage for the release of a Russian assassin in a third country’s custody is not a serious counteroffer… It is a bad faith attempt to avoid the deal on the table that Russia should take.

Meanwhile, Griner was convicted on August 4, 2022, and sentenced to nine years in prison. Before the verdict, Griner made a statement to the court:

I never meant to hurt anybody, I never meant to put in jeopardy the Russian population, I never meant to break any laws here… I made an honest mistake and I hope that in your ruling that it doesn't end my life here. I know everybody keeps talking about political pawn and politics, but I hope that that is far from this courtroom.

Griner's lawyers called the outcome “absolutely unreasonable,” and President Joe Biden reemphasized Griner's status as a wrongfully detained prisoner: “Today, American citizen Brittney Griner received a prison sentence that is one more reminder of what the world already knew: Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney.”

On December 8, 2022, Griner was released from prison in a one-for-one exchange for arms dealer Bout, who had been in US custody for 12 years. The exchange, which took place in the United Arab Emirates, did not include US Marine Whelan.

“She’s safe, she’s on a plane, she’s on her way home,” Biden said. “After months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should have been there all along.”

In Greece in 2001, plane spotting (a hobby of actively identifying, logging, or photographing aircraft) was not popular. 

In fact, it was such an unknown pastime that when a group of 14 British and Dutch plane spotters visited Greece to partake in the activity, it raised alarms with local officials. The hobbyists were detained after notebooks full of detailed observations and data were confiscated. 

The group was convicted of collecting classified information - essentially espionage - and sentenced to three years of prison time. 

However, after applying for an appeal (and serving six weeks in jail) the judge agreed that these people were indeed just aircraft enthusiasts, rather than calculating spies, and overturned the convictions. Greece had also faced international pressure to do so, with then-Prime Minister Tony Blair getting involved.

When much of the younger generation thinks of Hugh Grant, the image is of a slightly bumbling, charming British leading man. However, for those around pre-1995, the conjured image is slightly less wholesome. 

One night in 1995, after partying with costars Jeff Goldblum and Tom Arnold, Grant picked up a sex worker in West Hollywood. Police discovered the pair “in an act of lewd conduct” shortly thereafter, and Grant's mug shot covered newspapers across the globe. 

The actor, who was dating model Elizabeth Hurley at the time, quickly released a statement, saying:

Last night I did something completely insane… I have hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say.

While Grant was convicted, the charge was minimal - $1,000 fine, two years’ summary probation, and he had to agree to participate in an AIDS education program.

However, Grant's response to the scandal has been hailed as a masterclass in public relations. He owned up immediately, didn't make excuses, and still managed to somehow come across as charming. Appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno shortly after the scandal, Grant said:

It’s not easy explaining… People have given me tons of ideas on this one, from “I was under a lot of pressure, I was lonely, I fell down the stairs when I was a kid,” but I think it would just be bollocks to say anything like that… I’m sure I would be enjoying this as much as everyone else [if I were watching], but it’s horrible when you’re on the other end. 

Divine Brown, the woman who was taken into custody alongside Grant, even said that the whole thing turned out to have a positive impact: “I was blessed that it could get me out of that lifestyle.”