OLIVE PRESS OPINION: An affront to justice

Dilip kuner

Olive Press

10
03.03.2026

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OLIVE PRESS OPINION: An affront to justice

THE case of Brett Dryden’s death in Mojacar is a shocking example of how an investigation can be derailed by incompetence and indifference.

Dryden, a 35-year-old British expat, was found dead with €8,000 missing, along with his phone and wallet, and clear signs of violence in his home.

Despite the evidence of foul play – bloodstains, multiple injuries, a suspicious lookout, and a stolen iPhone – Spanish authorities quietly closed the case in September.

What makes this case particularly troubling is not just the disturbing circumstances of Dryden’s death, but the failure of the authorities to follow up on critical leads.

Surveillance footage captured a masked figure outside Dryden’s home shortly before two individuals fled with his belongings.

Dryden had also arranged a meeting with an Albanian drug supplier, ‘Irdi’, yet neither Irdi nor his associate, ‘Hakim’, were ever questioned.

Worse still, the investigation ignored key details about the stolen iPhone’s whereabouts, which pointed to suspicious locations, and the fact that one device linked to the crime was registered to a woman with known connections to criminals.

To close a case with such glaring holes is an affront to justice.

Brett’s family deserve answers, not apathy.

Sandra Dryden, his mother, has rightly expressed frustration with the dismissal.

That she needs to reach out to journalists and dig deep into her pockets to pay for investigators is a disgrace.

It is a damning indictment of a justice system that can, at best, be described as neglectful and, at worst, complicit in the cover-up of a violent crime.

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Dilip Kuner is a NCTJ-trained journalist whose first job was on the Folkestone Herald as a trainee in 1988. He worked up the ladder to be chief reporter and sub editor on the Hastings Observer and later news editor on the Bridlington Free Press. At the time of the first Gulf War he started working for the Sunday Mirror, covering news stories as diverse as Mick Jagger’s wedding to Jerry Hall (a scoop gleaned at the bar at Heathrow Airport) to massive rent rises at the ‘feudal village’ of Princess Diana’s childhood home of Althorp Park. In 1994 he decided to move to Spain with his girlfriend (now wife) and brought up three children here. He initially worked in restaurants with his father, before rejoining the media world in 2013, working in the local press before becoming a copywriter for international firms including Accenture, as well as within a well-known local marketing agency. He joined the Olive Press as a self-employed journalist during the pandemic lock-down, becoming news editor a few months later. Since then he has overseen the news desk and production of all six print editions of the Olive Press and had stories published in UK national newspapers and appeared on Sky News.

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OLIVE PRESS OPINION: An affront to justice

Dilip kuner

© Olive Press