ANOTHER British teen faces years behind bars in a Qatari jail after being accused of trafficking cannabis into the Middle Eastern nation.
Lino Neil was detained at Hamad International Airport in Doha after being found with a suitcase filled with cannabis while travelling home from Thailand.
The 18-year-old claims he was forced to carry the drugs by a gang who threatened him and his family.
After a trip abroad with his girlfriend, the fishing-mad teenager was flying to Dublin for the handover when he was arrested.
He went on to spend Christmas “terrified” and alone in a prison cell.
Neil’s family are now facing crippling legal costs as they prepare for a criminal trial in the Qatari capital – which could cost up to £40,000.
They have already paid £2,500 to secure legal representation ahead of his court appearance.
The family insist the distraught teen, who is from the small village of Drymen, was exploited.
His mother Nicola, 49, said she hopes the Qatari authorities will come to their senses and realise her son was acting under duress.
“He is just a teenage boy, a baby, and he has no contacts in Thailand and he’d have no way of setting up that kind of drug deal,” she said.
“It’s so obvious that he has been exploited and abused by gangsters and I just really want him home.”
Nicola added that her son had been controlled and exploited by a British man who told him what to wear and what to eat.
“I don’t know how he got into this mess but I know he was terrified and he phoned me a couple of weeks before he was due to fly home and told me he was terrified,” she said.
“He has said they had a hold over him and he couldn’t get out of it.
“They said they would harm him and his family if he didn’t do as they said.”
The distraught mother said her son was “totally distraught” in custody and had been subjected to harsh conditions.
“They put him in a jail in Qatar Airport and he’s had so little food to eat that he’s lost a lot of. He is terrified,” she said.
“When I spoke to him the other day he was frantic and said he was going to take his own life and I can’t take the thought of that.”
Neil’s older brother Robbie, 28, was due to collect him from Cairnryan ferry terminal before Christmas.
It was only when his younger brother failed to arrive that the family realised something was wrong.
Robbie later learned that Neil had been arrested and initially held in an airport prison cell with 80 other men before being transferred to the city’s central prison.
Echoing his mother’s claims, Robbie said that despite his brother having previous convictions, it was impossible he could have organised a drug deal.
“He’s just a wee laddie who knows more about fishing than anything else,” he said.
“We just need to get him home.”
Neil is due to appear in court later this month, where he will attempt to convince judges he was forced to smuggle the drugs.
A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “We are supporting a British man who is detained in Qatar and are in contact with his family and local authorities.
Sadly, Neil is the latest in a long line of British teenagers to be detained on drug-related charges.
In 2025, 18-year-old Bella Culley was arrested at Tbilisi Airport after allegedly entering the country with 34 bags of marijuana concealed in her luggage.
The teenager, from Billingham in Teesside, initially faced up to 20 years in prison.
Five months later, she walked free after her family paid £137,000, reducing her sentence to two years.
Prosecutors ultimately decided that, given her age and the fact she was pregnant, she should be released.
