Found refugees'
passports in aircraft’s
septic tank
Four persons who arrived in Oslo without any identity papers were mighty surprised when police later confronted them with the remnants of their passports – found after sifting through the contents of their flight's toilets.
Back of front cover of Indian passport"It was a real dirty job," remarked one of the police officers assigned to the case.
The four would-be refugees, all from India, had claimed they had no passports or other identification documents. They applied for asylum in Norway upon landing at Oslo's main airport at Gardermoen.
Police were suspicious, however, and searched the cabin of the flight they'd landed on, looking for the missing documents. When they weren't found, they ordered that the aircraft's septic tank be emptied.
It was, and the contents were delivered to police. A police officer handed the messy job of sorting out the contents quickly found remnants of four passports that had been ripped up and thrown down the toilet.
After a few hours, the police officer managed to fit the pieces together, complete with photos of the all four, their passport numbers and the names of each. The names matched those on the airline's passenger list.
"They were very surprised when confronted with the remnants of their passports when they tried to register for asylum," said Farhad Lotfzadpak of the police unit at Gardermoen.
All four later disappeared, however, from the asylum center where they'd been sent, before their cases came up for interviews.
Nina Berglund
No comments:
Post a Comment