Man caught at Dubai airport using brother's passport; jailed

Photo for illustrative purposes only

An assistant manager, who hails from Ghana, has been sentenced to six months in jail for using his brother's French passport when trying to go from Dubai to Germany.
The Court of First Instance, however, cleared the 30-year-old man of the charge of faking an entry seal on his brother's French passport. The court ordered that he be deported at the end of his jail term.
Prosecutors accused him of forging a government department seal (the airport's seal) and using another person's unofficial document. He was arrested on May 9 at the Dubai International Airport.
The defendant, who is currently in detention, admitted in the investigation that when he was in Ghana, he decided to go to Germany and sought his brother's help. "My brother lives in Germany and holds a French passport. I asked him to send his passport to me."
He claimed he found the entry seal, attributed to the Dubai International Airport, on the passport and it was dated April 28, even though said he had collected the passport prior to that date. "When I called my brother, he told me that the seal was fake and I had to use it when leaving Dubai."
He kept his brother's passport with him and came to Dubai on a visit visa using his own passport. At the immigration counter, and upon his departure, he showed his Ghana passport and it was then stamped with the exit seal.
However, at the boarding gate, the airline security employee asked him about his entry permit into Germany. The defendant showed him the French passport that bore the fake seal. He was then exposed and arrested.
He admitted he used the fake seal to deceive the airport staff that he had entered with the French passport. He did this so as to be able to exit, because without that seal, he would not be able to leave.
A Filipino airline security coordinator, 39, said he was on duty checking the passengers' passports at Terminal 3 before they boarded the plane. "The defendant came and showed me a passport which obviously did not belong to him. I also checked the passport pages and found an entry seal that looked fake and different from the original similar seals. I asked him more than once whether the passport belonged to him and whether the photo on the passport was his and he replied yes.
"However, when I asked him about the entry seal, he stalled and pretended to be busy talking on the phone.
"I think he did that so to leave for Germany. He was going to Hamburg and could not travel there with his original passport because of some difficulties he might have been facing in getting the Schengen visa."
mary@khaleejtimes.com

Marie Nammour

mary@khaleejtimes.com