Man jailed after €15,000 fake passport fails to fool immigration authorities

A €15,000 fake passport was not enough to deceive the local immigration authorities, one man has found to his cost.

32-year-old Husam Hamad, an Iraqi national, was jailed for 6 months by Magistrate Victor Axiaq earlier today,  after he admitted to charges of forging an Australian passport, making use of a falsified document and possession of a falsified immigration document.

Inspector Hubert Gerada told the court how Hamad had been stopped by passport control at the Malta International Airport on suspicion that his passport had been tampered with. The forgery was described as “high quality,” with the image of the person it had been issued to having been altered in such a way as to be almost indistinguishable from Hamad.

Hamad had arrived in Malta on a flight from Greece and intended to catch another flight to Ireland, the court was told. 

He told the police that he had bought the fake passport from Turkey and had travelled to Malta because the forger had told him that it was the best place to depart from to enter Ireland, where he said the life of refugees was much better.

Lawyer Yanika Bugeja was Hamad’s legal aid defence counsel.