[Note: undated footage]

Robert Witchell speaks with police officers in undated footage. He was rescued from a clandestine clinic in Caldas Novas, Brazil.

The picture shows the clinic where the Englishman was held in Caldas Novas, Brazil, undated. He was rescued by the police.

The wife of a British rancher in Brazil signed papers to have him kidnapped off the street and committed to an illegal detox center for alcoholics when he refused to fund a trip for her relatives to visit them over Christmas.

Brit Robert Witchell, 59, was locked up for a month before he could escape the clinic, which cops described as a "private prison."

He told detectives he had been window shopping shortly before Christmas when he was snatched off the street by four burley men, who bundled him into the back of a car.

He was then driven 90 minutes to the Novo Dia, or New Day, a drug rehab clinic in Caldas Novas, Goias State, and locked up until police rescued him on January 22. Witchell was told his wife had signed the order for his detention because of his drinking.

In reality, he told the police, they had fallen out when he refused to pay to have her entire family flown in to spend Christmas with them. In an extraordinary video interview, Witchell, wearing a green T-shirt and faded denim cut-offs, tells police how he had been standing by a shop when he was abducted.

[Note: partially no sound]