SOURCE : THE NATIONAL

A man who has travelled three times to UAE shows his fake passport in Kerala, India - The National

ABU DHABI - SEP 10: It was three hours before Faisal Madisa’s flight to India, and the only thing left to do was pick up his new passport.

Mr Madisa had to dash to Deira, a district of Dubai, before takeoff to meet a man who would hand him the document. He looked briefly at the picture and the name it carried before making his way to Dubai International Airport.

But at the airport, the passport came under closer scrutiny.

It was fake. Customs officials easily identified the document as a forgery, even before they checked it with a machine. Mr Madisa was arrested, and six months later, was found guilty of using a forged passport. He has been deported.

He said he knew the risks of using the fake. But, he added, he had to leave the country immediately using a new identity to avoid paying outstanding debt.

Officials say Mr Madisa’s situation is part of a wider trend. Hundreds of cases involving fake passports are dealt with in the State Security Court in Abu Dhabi every month.

Major Gen Nasser al Minhali, the acting assistant undersecretary for the Abu Dhabi Department of Naturalisation, Residency and Ports Affairs, did not have precise case figures in Abu Dhabi. He said, however, that increased training for passport control employees and improved scanning devices have made it easier to spot fakes and reduce the number of illegal exits and entries.

“There is more scrutiny now,” he said.

In the first half of this year, 686 forged passports were seized at Dubai International Airport, an increase of 20 per cent compared with 2009, according to the Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department. To step up the battle against forged passports, the department established a specialised training centre in December.

“We all have our reasons” for wanting to leave the country with new passports, Mr Madisa said, sitting in shackles in the courtroom this spring. Two other Indian nationals charged with the same crime were sentenced to six months in prison followed by deportation.

All of the men paid Dh3,000 to Dh6,000 for a new identity that they thought would allow them to leave the country. They were led to the document forger through recommendations from friends.

Mr Madisa paid Dh6,000, double the amount the inmate sitting next to him had paid. He gave the money to a friend, who gave it to another friend, and that friend knew the forger in Deira.

Mr Madisa never met the forger. He knows him only by the name “Shiaz”.

"I am sure it is not his real name,” Mr Madisa said, laughing along with the two other inmates.

The industry persists outside the UAE as well. Many natives of the Indian subcontinent travel to the country on forged documents they have obtained in their homelands.

Indian officials said last month that at least two passengers on Flight 812, which crashed on landing at Mangalore in May, had used fake passports. The naturalisation and residency department, however, has not been able to confirm that the documents were not legitimate.