Police say Stefán remains on the run after two and a half years
Wednesday 30th September 2026 on 12:16 in
Iceland
Icelandic police still do not know where Stefán Ingimar Koeppen Brynjarsson is, more than two and a half years after he was wanted in a major drug-import investigation. He has not surrendered, mbl.is reports.
Police inspector Jón Gunnar Sigurgeirsson, of the Capital Region Police, said officers had been in regular contact with Stefán’s defence lawyer. “He is just on the run,” Jón Gunnar said.
Police requested an Interpol notice in March 2024 in connection with an investigation into drug imports and distribution. The cases include a large-scale amphetamine smuggling operation involving the Norræna in April 2023 and suspicions that drugs had been brought into Iceland by couriers. Interpol has issued a Red Notice, an international request to locate a person and provisionally arrest them with a view to extradition.
Eight-year sentence for drug smuggling
Stefán was previously given a lengthy sentence for drug offences. In 2003, Iceland’s Supreme Court sentenced him to eight years in prison, increasing a six-year sentence imposed by the Reykjanes District Court.
He was convicted of importing a total of about 5.6 kilograms of amphetamine and 930 grams of cocaine into Iceland in 1998 and 2001. He was also convicted of possessing more than 300 grams of cocaine. The Supreme Court considered him the leading figure in the organised criminal activity.
The court said he travelled to Germany in 2000 but continued the criminal activity from there. He was arrested in the Netherlands in 2002 and extradited to Iceland. In 1998, he had received a two-year suspended prison sentence in Germany, which counted as a previous offence when the Supreme Court set his sentence in 2003.
Arrested in Mexico
Stefán later had another encounter with the law abroad. DV reported that he was arrested in Cancún, Mexico, in 2016 on suspicion of drug smuggling and was subsequently transferred to the Cefereso prison in Perote. There is no publicly available information that he was convicted in that case.