ISIS has reportedly obtained
equipment and blank passport books required to make fake Syrian passports when
taking control of Raqqa and Deir Ezzour in Syria, say Western security
officials. A Belgian counter-terrorism official has said that ISIS acquired
similar supplies to make Iraqi passports when they overtook Mosul.
The 13 November Paris attacks
have highlighted the risk of terrorists entering Europe carrying fake Syrian
passports, as at least one of the attackers has been registered as a refugee in
Greece.
While European leaders are
attempting to strengthen border security, their efforts may not be sufficient.
Frontex, the EU’s border agency, has deployed document inspectors to Greek
island in order to identify fake passports. However, there are currently only
ten inspectors, and identifying a fraudulent document printed on an official
blank with the proper equipment can be a very difficult task, a Frontex
spokeswoman said.
“It’s enormously difficult to
figure out,” said former UK senior counterterrorism official Richard Barrett.
“Maybe if you have very good local knowledge, very good Arabic language
skills,” he added. ISIS “can probably make them good enough to get them past
someone who has faced 10,000 refugees,” he added.
As communication between
Western governments and the Syrian regime is almost nonexistent, identifying
Syrian fakes is an even more challenging task.
“The lack of ability to verify
information with the Syrian government about how many passports may be
vulnerable for exploitation in former provincial/regional government
building(s) will make attempts to analyze the scale of the problem difficult,”
says a confidential analysis prepared by the Department of Homeland Security,
the Wall Street Journal reports.
Culled from: i-HLS
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