Paris attacks:
A BIG clue left behind apparently by one of the Paris attacks’ suicide bombers has prompted a rethink of Europe’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis — but it has been suggested it could be a fake planted on the scene on purpose.
Authorities said a passport carrying the name of a Syrian refugee was found near the body of one of the three jihadists who detonated explosive belts outside Stade de France on Friday night. French President Francois Hollande was among more than 80,000 people there to watch France play Germany in a friendly football match at the stadium.
However, a French official has suggested that the passport may have been planted on the scene.
“The single most intriguing fact is that the passport was there at all,” the source told The Independent.
“It was not actually on the terrorist’s body, or what remained of it. It was lying nearby, as if meant to be found.”
Another French police source told Channel 4 News that the passport was a fake likely made in Turkey.
The passport carried the name of 25-year-old Ahmed Almuhamed. The travel document was processed on the Greek island of Leros on October 3 after the passport holder was rescued from a sinking boat that had set out from Turkey.
French officials are still trying to verify that the suicide bomber was Mr Almuhamed.
“There are three possibilities,” one source told The Independent.
“He is the man whose name is on the passport. He was a false refugee, travelling on a false passport. Or he is someone else and a false passport was deliberately left there to sow confusion.”
It has been suggested that the passport holder is believed to have used the fake passport to pose as a Syrian refugee among a group of 70 others seeking asylum.
Trafficking in fake Syrian passports has increased as hundreds of thousands of people try to win refugee status, according to the chief of the European Union border agency Frontex.
A US intelligence official told CBS News that the name and picture on the passport were crosschecked and he was not known to intelligence officials. The passport did not contain the correct numbers and the picture did not match the name, the intelligence official said.
It’s also possible that the passport was stolen.
Not only is there a large trade in fake passports, The Guardian points out that stolen travel documents are being sold for as much as several thousand euros.
Syrians have been mugged on the border between Greece and Macedonia as they tried to travel north.
Georgia State University transcultural conflict academic Charlie Winter has also questioned why a terrorist would take his passport on a suicide mission.
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