Man sentenced to three months in prison for entering Malta with false passport

A 26-year-old Iraqi Kurd travelling with a false passport hid in a toilet at the airport before presenting himself to immigration without any documents.

Azad Taha Kakarash, from Slemani in Iraq, pleaded guilty to trying to enter Malta without a passport. He is understood to have used a fake Finnish passport to enter Malta and then spent some time hiding in a toilet at Malta International Airport in order to make it harder for immigration officials to identify the flight on which he had arrived.

Inspector Mario Haber told magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit that immigration officials had compared passenger embarkation lists to the names of those who had disembarked and had found one passenger, travelling on a Finnish passport, missing. Police suspect the passport to have been destroyed by the accused upon entry to Malta.

The arraignment was swift, despite the cumbersome requirement of translating the proceedings from the Suryani language into Arabic and then into Maltese and back again.

Kakarah pleaded guilty to the charges, repeating his admission in spite of the magistrate warning him that it would lead to a prison sentence.

The court sentenced the Kurd to imprisonment for three months.