Volume 13, Issue 13
16 - 31 March 2014
30 BAHT
What’s Inside:
Passport security worries T
he tragedy of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has thrown into relief the loopholes and weaknesses of passport scrutiny at many major international airports including those in Thailand and Malaysia. It has now been revealed that the two men travelling on the stolen passports of an Austrian and an Italian were Iranian nationals. There is no evidence that they were involved in terrorist activities and may well have been economic migrants seeking a brighter future in Europe. At least one of the stolen passports had biometric features, yet immigration officers in Kuala Lumpur failed to pick up on the fake credentials. Indeed, Malaysia has pioneered technology to attempt to combat passport fraud, yet the Iranian passengers in question managed to board the plane, likely because their documents were not checked against the international data base. The Pattaya travel agent who booked the tickets for the two said the purchase of the tickets for the imposters had been arranged through an Iranian contact named Ali. One of the reasons for thinking the matter is not related to terrorism is that Ali wanted the cheapest flights to Europe and did not specify any particular airline. Colonel Suphachai Phuikaewkham, Pattaya police chief, confirmed that Ali, thought now to be in Iran, had bought airline tickets for others in the past. The scale of the problem of passport fraud is immense. Over the years at least 40 million passports have been lost or stolen, and the figure may be much higher as some countries
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