Terror Trail: British passports forged in Pak, says report

New Delhi: Posing a major challenge to counter-terrorism efforts,  forged British passports has been found to be the “most prevalent” in Pakistan with a US government agency recommending steps to check overseas travel by terrorists using such travel papers. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO), which sent a team to Pakistan and three other countries for field assessment, found gaps in four key areas — sharing of information on terrorists, use of fraudulent travel papers, passport issuance security and corruption in passport issuance and immigration agencies. [caption id=“attachment_48525” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Since British citizens are not required to obtain visas to travel to many countries, a terrorist could use one of these fraudulent passports to travel to many countries without further background checks. Reuters”]  [/caption] A latest GAO report, significantly, quoted a former Pakistani official responsible for immigration enforcement to say that “fraudulent British passports are the most prevalent type of fraudulent travel documents in Pakistan”. “Since British citizens are not required to obtain visas to travel to many countries, a terrorist could use one of these fraudulent passports to travel to many countries without further background checks”, the report, titled ‘Combating Terrorism’ and presented to the US Congress last month, said. The report came weeks after an alarming revelation by Interpol chief Ronald K Noble that about 40,000 people criss-crossed the globe with forged, lost or stolen travel documents in the past year. “Terrorists and dangerous criminals continue to move from one country to another on stolen, falsified or lost documents,” the Interpol chief said in Singapore last month. He added that the maximum threat was faced by the airline industry which continued to be the prime target of terrorists. PTI