Details of blank Afghanistan passports stolen in Belgium have been circulated as a priority to all 184 Interpol member countries, to counter use by criminals or terrorists.
In the same week as a number of terrorist attacks across the Middle East, including bombings in Egypt where more than 20 people died, Interpol is highlighting the importance for member countries to take action not always visible to the public which can help prevent terrorist attacks and other serious international crime.
On April 26, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Belgium urgently alerted Interpol that blank passports had been stolen from their embassy in Brussels. A number of official seals were also taken during the break-in.
Interpol reports that its Command and Co-ordination Centre helped Afghanistan share all relevant information with Belgium and with each of Interpol’s 184 member countries through a special notification. More importantly, the details were added to the world’s only global database of Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD), maintained by Interpol. It holds details of nearly 11 million documents from 97 countries.
Many of the documents registered in the database are stolen blank passports, making them particularly valuable to criminals who can easily insert photographs, descriptions and aliases, making them indistinguishable from a valid document, the policing body adds.
What they say
"By reporting this theft of stolen blank passports immediately to Interpol’s General Secretariat and to the Belgian police authorities, Afghanistan has both reduced the value of these stolen passports to the thieves and helped all Interpol member countries to better protect their borders and their citizens from the dangerous acts of terrorists and other serious international criminals," said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K Noble. "Stolen blank passports are one of the most valuable tools available to terrorists wishing to travel anonymously to any country. The best way for law enforcement around the world to detect such documents and prevent their use is through member countries contributing to and consulting Interpol’s Stolen and Lost Travel Document database. Using this database might be an ordinary event which unlike a successful terrorist attack receives little publicity, but Interpol and its member countries know that more terrorist attacks and serious crime are prevented by law enforcement doing ordinary things which can produce extraordinary results."
The SLTD was launched in June 2002 after Interpol and its member countries identified a link between terrorist activities and the use of lost or stolen travel documents. In this time Interpol’s database has grown from a few thousand to almost 11 million and the seizures of stolen passports has increased exponentially. In December 2005, Interpol enabled Switzerland to become the first and only country in the world to provide real time access to Interpol’s SLTD database to 20,000 federal agents at border control points, customs and immigration offices, embassies and consulates, enabling officers to verify instantly if a document is stolen.
Since, Switzerland has been able to conduct nearly 500 times more searches of Interpol’s SLTD database and to detect almost double the number of false documents than all of the other 183 Interpol member countries combined. Interpol adds that it is now expanding this initiative to other interested member countries.
