My brother was dead and buried two years before police told us

Family did not know that witness protection grass had overdosed

- Cheryl McEvoy and John Dingwall

The family of a police informer buried in a pauper’s grave only learned of his death almost two years after his body was found.

Brian Douglas was forced to flee his home after he betrayed a drugs gang by helping detectives.

The 50-year-old’s brothers Jimmie and Archie Douglas have condemned authorities for failing to notify them when he died from an overdose in February 2019.

They are demanding to know why they had to discover through an English police force that their brother had passed away and was buried in Scotland without their knowledge.

Brian was placed on witness protection after he turned in a notorious Ayrshire crime group.

Jimmie, 63, was tipped off that his brother, a low-level drug dealer and heroin addict, was to be petrol-bombed for passing on information.

Police relocated Brian to Port Glasgow, where he remained until his body was found in a flat.

Jimmie said: “Brian was no angel, he’d been in and out of trouble for years, but he didn’t deserve to be treated this way and neither do we.