One of the strangest aspects of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is the fact that at least two passengers boarded the plane using stolen passports.
Evidence of the stolen passports was unearthed when two European men, an Italian and an Austrian, saw their names listed on the flight manifest released by Malaysia Airlines and frantically phoned their families (and the media) to let them know they weren't on the plane.
The stolen passports have understandably raised fears that the disappearance of the flight could be related to terrorism, but some experts say it is instead evidence of a large passport smuggling ring operating in southeast Asia.
The two men travelling on the European passports were due to fly on from Beijing to that continent, according to the airline. Xu Ke, a former airline pilot who teaches at Zhejiang Police College, told the Christian Science Monitor that "it is most likely that the two foreigners carrying forged passports were illegal migrants" rather than terrorists.
Both men bought their passports in Thailand, which is known as a hub for stolen or forged documents. More than 60,000 passports – both Thai and foreign – were reported missing or stolen in the country between January 2012 and June 2013 according to Thailand's ministry of foreign affairs.
Interpol says there are over 39 million lost or stolen passports in its database, but airlines rarely check it when boarding passengers. According to European border agency Frontex, there has been a massive increase in the number of forged passports being used to enter Europe. In the last quarter of 2013, there was a 61 percent rise in the number of fake passports discovered, with around 170 people being caught every month.
"The bad news is that, despite being incredibly cost effective and deployable to virtually anywhere in the world, only a handful of countries are systematically using SLTD to screen travellers," Interpol general secretary Ronald Noble told a conference last month.
Malaysia Airlines has a history of security lapses, in 2012 the company was fined by New Zealand authorities for allowing a man to board a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Wellington "despite orders not to from immigration authorities".
[Image via Flickr]
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