A perfect case of mistaken identity

The FBI agents investigating Derek Bond are not any fools; they are above-average fools

The pickle in which poor Derek Bond has found himself – banged up in a South African jail cell pending extradition to the US because the FBI thought he was really Derek Sykes and responsible for a multimillion-dollar money-laundering scam in Houston, Texas, whereas in fact he's a retired engineer from Bristol whose only flirtation with money-laundering is doubtless leaving the odd fiver in the back pocket of trousers destined for Sketchley's – is not, I can reveal, without precedent.

Last year, my parents-in-law, Anne and Bob – a more law-abiding couple than whom it would be hard to find (although Mr Bond and his wife Audrey by all accounts come close) – set off from their home in South Yorkshire for a Caribbean cruise. All went swimmingly until they reached Miami Airport. There, one of those customs officials unique to the US, who are fully trained to dispense one of two categories of welcome – Rottweiler and rabid Rottweiler – looked at Bob's passport for an uncomfortably long time. He then did some vigorous cross-referencing on a computer and consulted several colleagues before directing Anne and Bob, none too politely, to a small windowless room.

They were detained there for three hours, given nothing to eat or drink, and allowed only to go to the toilet in the corner of a barred cell. Anne is a woman whose most heinous crime has been to wear a loud dress in a built-up area; Bob might once have parked on a single-yellow line, but I doubt it. Yet the Miami customs officials treated them as if they were a latter-day Bonnie and Clyde. Understandably, they were aghast, as well as scared. But when they asked what was going on, all they got was a snide "we just wanna gedda know you a bid bedder".

Eventually, they were curtly told, without a hint of an apology, that they could go. When they asked again what it had all been about, they were informed that an escaped convict on the FBI's Most Wanted list shared Bob's name and general description. Obviously, any fool could tell that a retired mining engineer from Barnsley, Yorkshire, was not, nor ever had been, an escaped convict from Tallahassee, Florida. But those US customs officials, like the FBI agents investigating Derek Bond, are not any fools. They are above-average fools.

And the foolishness in the case of Mr Bond has evidently been compounded by the uselessness of Her Majesty's Foreign Office. Mr Bond has been in a Durban jail for 21 nights, suffering from high blood pressure, in a manifest case of wrongful arrest, and what has the British High Commissioner done? He has, according to a Foreign Office spokesman, facilitated "legal access and a visit from a doctor". By bringing the whole sorry business to the attention of yesterday's media, Mr Bond's family have probably ensured that it will be resolved sooner rather than later, which in itself is a pretty pitiful state of affairs. Our man in Durban surely could have done more to help before the tabloid press got on to his case.

Still, at least Mr Bond has presumably been unable, from his jail cell, to see Tony Blair and George Bush dancing their increasingly frantic two-step. As a 72-year-old British citizen held in a foreign jail at the insistence of American authorities who didn't even visit him until 17 days after his arrest, he might have been entitled to ask what the "special relationship" is for.

I'm not quite out of righteous indignation yet, but of course the other response to Mr Bond's predicament is a hearty chuckle. "He doesn't strike me as an international criminal, but who knows these days?" said one of his neighbours, interviewed by the Western Daily Press. None of which is remotely funny for him and his family, and they might not see the funny side of it for some time to come, especially if his health suffers. Indeed, it took my parents-in-law a good few weeks before they could properly laugh about their (considerably less painful) experience.

But the fact remains that there is something inherently comic about cases of mistaken identity. Shakespeare knew that, which is why his comedies are riddled with them. And all the great farceurs, from Ben Jonson to John Cleese, have understood that to extract maximum comedy from a case of mistaken identity, the two characters being mistaken for one another must be poles apart in terms of temperament, lifestyle and curriculum vitae. Thus it is with Mr Bond, a founder member of Clifton Rotary Club, and his supposed Doppelgänger Derek Sykes, mastermind of a £3.5m telemarketing scam.

And thus it was, too, in the case of the paediatrician hounded from her home during the hunt-the-paedophile hysteria whipped up by the News of the World. That might have been funny had it not been so tragic. The tragedy was that it could even happen. Ditto the saga involving Mr Bond.

b.viner@independent.co.uk