Al Qaeda Getting Fake Passports From The Colombians

1-27-2006

Bogota, 27 Jan. (AKI) - Colombian police have detained a total 19 suspects and broken up a ring that allegedly provided false passports to members of al-Qaeda and militant Palestinian group Hamas that enabled them to travel in Europe and the United States, the attorney general's office announced. Those arrested included three immigration officials, according to press reports. 

The suspects are accused of forging passports for Pakistani, Jordanian, Iraqi and Egyptian citizens, who sent the necessary documentation to the Colombian ring, who made up the false passports without their customers needing to come to Colombia, investigators said. The US cooperated with the police operation, and will seek the extradition of some of the suspects, it said. The Colobian government said it launched the probe, in August 2002, after three Iraqis travelling with false Israeli passports were detained at El Dorado international airport in the Colombian capital, Bogota. 

After the Iraqis' arrests, the Colombian authorities ordered phone-taps that led to the arrest of the Jordanian citizens Jamal Abdel Mutte Hassan and Zaben Sultan Othman Yousef, both of whom had illegally acquired Columbian nationality, according to Colombian daily El Nuevo Siglo. Hassan was sentenced to an eight years in prison for trafficking in illegal migrants, and Yousef got a 19-month jail term for falsifying documents. In 2004, two further men, Amin Omar Said Ahmad and and Baghge Kharfan, suspected of belonging to a criminal ring, were extradited to the United States, where they were tried for money laundering.