The official consensus is now that there were probably not terrorists, but two Iranians traveling on one Austrian and one Italian passport in order to seek asylum. The fact remains, however, that they could have been terrorists.
Interpol maintains a global database of stolen passports to prevent just such occurrences – the Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database. It currently contains more than 40 million records. But, said Interpol's secretary general Ronald Noble yesterday, "it remains of serious concern to Interpol that approximately four out of every 10 international passengers are not being screened against our SLTD database, and this should be a worry for us all."
Interpol is now trying to find the criminal gang or organization that facilitated the Iranians' acquisition of the stolen documents. In reality, fake (or stolen) documents is a major underground business. A search on Pastebin will immediately return many dozens of 'advertisements': "We are the best producer of quality fake documents..." and "Changing nationality or making any quality fake or real documents..." are two immediate examples. (In reality, many of these are likely to be covert federal agents.)
Pilot Scheme
Meanwhile, Interpol has become so exasperated by national border authorities' failure to make use of the SLTD that it is piloting a scheme to allow private sector partners in the travel, hotel and banking industries to screen documents against the SLTD database when people book a plane ticket, check into a hotel or open a bank account.
“After waiting years for more than a handful of member countries to take the necessary steps to systematically protect their citizens and visitors from individuals using stolen passports to cross borders, we are pleased to now have the opportunity to work with global airlines to put this vital additional passenger security measure in place,” said Noble.
Interpol is not alone in expressing exasperation. Borderpol, is an international non-profit organization that seeks to make borders smarter and safer. Its director and chief of operations is Ken Richardson, who has held several high level positions in the UK Immigration Service and Home Office. Today it has issued its own strongly-worded statement: "Borderpol has for years been preaching the gospel on the use of fraudulent travel documents by various criminal sectors around the world. It is an open secret that the majority of fraudulent passports are used to facilitate illegal or illicit migration movements while a small undeterminable percentage of these are used by individuals associated with weapons, narcotics, wildlife trafficking and smuggling not to mention state sponsored use of bogus passports to cover the identities of covert ops personnel."
Borderpol Chairman and CEO Tom Tass believes that criminal activity in fake documents would decline "if the myriad of international organizations associated with challenging the problem got along better. But they do not. Professional jealousies and ongoing turf wars between legacy national and global institutions are at the root of this and continue unabated." While it acknowledges that governments have improved entry controls, at the same time, "exit controls have been allowed to atrophy or have been removed altogether... It was a profound mistake by states to eliminate effective exit controls particularly at international airports."
In the meantime, he concludes, "the proverbial barn door is left open which is an aid and comfort to the criminal community."