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AP: Terrorists obtain S. Africa passports
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-28 09:24 Al-Qaeda militants and other terrorists traveling
through Europe have obtained South African passports, and authorities believe
they got them from crime syndicates operating inside the government agency that
issues the documents.
The illicit acquisition of the passports, which allow travel through many
African countries and Britain without visas, sent shock waves through South
Africa after one top police official said "boxes and boxes" of the documents
were discovered in London.
People stand
outside the Department of Home Affairs regional offices in Johannesburg,
South Africa, June 29, 2004. South African officials say criminal
syndicates selling the country's identity documents and passports have
operated inside Home Affairs for years. [AP]
| Barry Gilder, director general of the Department of Home Affairs, told The
Associated Press he has come across a number of instances in which South African
passports were found in the hands of al-Qaeda suspects or their associates in
Europe — both in his current capacity and as a former deputy director in the
National Intelligence Agency.
Gilder gave no specifics, and he described these as "isolated" cases. But he
said his department is moving aggressively to counter the threat, dedicating
more senior officials to fight corruption and introducing identity cards and
passports containing microchips with the owner's fingerprints.
"We do not want our country to be used either as a staging post or haven for
terrorists," Gilder told the AP.
South African officials say crime syndicates selling the country's identity
documents and passports for as little as $77 have operated inside Home Affairs
for years.
They sell mostly to economic migrants, who find it easier to enter Europe or
the United States on a South African passport than ones from their own
countries. But terrorists now appear to be tapping into these networks, Gilder
acknowledged.
In one instance, a Tunisian al-Qaeda suspect, Ihsan Garnaoui, told German
investigators he had a number of South African passports, sources close to case
told the AP. It is not clear how he got them.
Garnaoui was traveling on a forged Portuguese passport when he arrived in
Germany in January 2003, on a journey via South Africa and Belgium. He is
accused of planning bombings on American and Jewish targets to coincide with the
start of the U.S.-led war on Iraq.
South African Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi called attention to the
illegal acquisition of passports when he told the National Assembly's safety and
security committee that a number of people with "evil intentions against this
country" were arrested here and sent home shortly before April 14 elections.
This prompted the arrests of suspected al-Qaeda members in Jordan, Syria and
Britain, he said.
"In part of this operation, in London, the British police found boxes and
boxes of South African passports in the home of one of these people, or an
associate of these people," Selebi said, according to local news reports. A
transcript of his remarks was unavailable, and Selebi's office did not respond
to requests for details.
The fact that these were genuine South African passports, not forgeries, was
of particular concern, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said.
"They (al-Qaeda members) certainly did not pick up those passports out there
in their countries," she told Parliament's Home Affairs committee in June. "A
member of the department must have sold those passports to them."
The press office at Britain's Scotland Yard said it had no information on the
matter, and officials at the Metropolitan Police and Home Office declined to
comment.
South Africa's notoriously porous borders have repeatedly been exploited by
international fugitives, including Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a suspect in the 1998
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But Safety and Security
Minister Charles Nqakula said as recently as March that there were no al-Qaeda
cells in the country.
Selebi did not specify who was arrested in South Africa in April, or what
action they allegedly planned. But two suspects who were later released — a
South African and a Jordanian married to a South African — told the AP they were
questioned about an alleged al-Qaeda plot to attack American and British targets
during the election, which coincided with the 10th anniversary of the end of
apartheid.
The South African, Shaid Hassim, and the Jordanian, Mohammed Hendi, strongly
denied any such plot, or involvement in supplying passports to terrorists. They
said four others were also arrested in a series of raids and deported — two
Egyptian brothers, one of them with asylum status in Britain, and two
Jordanians.
Khaled Abdusalam was questioned for several hours upon his return to London
and released, but his brother Mahmoud is believed to be in custody in Egypt,
Hassim said. Jamal Odys and Walid Nassr were arrested after returning to Jordan,
but Nassr was later released, according to Hendi. Officials in the three
countries said they had no information on the suspects.
Hassim believes they were targeted because some of them belong to a
British-based group founded by Jordanian exiles called Jama'ah Tul Muslimeen,
which urged Muslims not to vote in South Africa's election.
On April 1, the day before the raids, all those arrested attended a dinner to
which Odys brought four DVDs containing material he had downloaded from an
al-Qaeda Web site, Hassim said. Interrogators accused the group of being an
al-Qaeda sleeper cell, he said.
No charges have been announced against the men, and their group does not
appear on any terrorist watch lists, according to officials in Britain and
Jordan.
Local and international security analysts were skeptical that al-Qaeda would
target South Africa, which has been strongly critical of Israel's treatment of
Palestinians and the war in Iraq. But they said it would be no surprise if
members had established a presence or links here to support attacks elsewhere.
"There is a sense that corruption in South African institutions has made the
place particularly vulnerable because people are able to slip in and out so
easily," said William Rosenau, a terrorism expert at the U.S.-based Rand Corp.
He noted Osama bin Laden's group has a history of cultivating individuals
precisely because they have passports that do not immediately arouse
suspicion.
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