Several militants of the self-styled Islamic State (Isis) are leaving Syria with false passports and heading to the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United States and Canada. This was revealed by an investigation by the Guardian, which brought to light a system that has its nerve center in Turkey.
According to the British newspaper, in fact, one of these networks is managed by an Uzbek who lives in Turkey and who has links with circles linked to extremism. The man sells high quality and fake passports from different countries for thousands of dollars. At least 10 people, the Guardian confirmed, illegally crossed the Syrian border with Turkey and left from Istanbul airport thanks to his passports.
The EU is the most popular destination, but in at least two cases people have managed to travel from Istanbul to Mexico with fake Russian passports and, from there, illegally crossed the border into the United States. Niger and Mauritania are also popular destinations, as are Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Uzbek business is doing so well, highlights the newspaper, which recently opened a new channel on the Telegram messaging app under the name ‘Istanbul Global Consulting’. The Guardian highlights how the burgeoning trade in these forged documents could allow dangerous extremists to escape the radar of security services and thus to justice for past crimes and potentially continue terrorist activity in countries other than Syria.
“I am willing to work with anyone – said the Uzbek in a chat with the Guardian, who presented himself as a customer interested in passports – It is not my job to understand who is evil and who is not. The services of safety”.
There are several options for buying fake passports, depending on the ethnicity of the customers, the languages they speak, where they want to go and how much they can spend. The cheapest documents to get to Europe with are Russian, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan passports, which cost around 5-6 thousand dollars. Other popular and slightly more expensive options are Ukrainian and Moldovan documents, which allow visa-free travel to the EU. The most expensive option is an EU country passport, which costs $ 8,000 and is usually required by Westerners and Arabs who speak some French and can pass as French or Belgians.
Usually, continues the Guardian, revealing a part of the system, an EU citizen arrives in Turkey with his own passport, gives it to Uzbek and his colleagues for about 2,800 dollars, then the passport photo is changed to that of a customer. The original owner of the passport then reports the loss and requests a replacement at their consulate in Istanbul.
According to sellers of counterfeit documents, it is impossible to forge a working biometric chip, but at many border crossings officials who check passports simply ignore the ones that don’t work, letting the passport holder pass. One can also officially ‘disappear’: for 500 dollars, in fact, Uzbekistan offers a Turkish death certificate that can be sent to the consulate of one’s country of origin. “Unless you are Abu Bakr Baghdadi (the leader of ISIS killed in 2019, ed.) Nobody will go to the morgue to check if you are really dead”, declares one of them.
Western authorities are aware of this system. “There is a particular vendor in Turkey who provides ISIS members with top-notch documents – said a source from the US Department of Homeland Security – We know that ISIS members use these fake passports to cross the border. Europe and European security cannot stop them all “.
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