UK-bound Iraqi family arrested at airport
Suspects’ passports ‘seemed to have been tampered with’
FIVE members of an Iraqi family who were trying to fly to the UK with fake Bulgarian passports have been arrested at Alicante-Elche airport, announced the National Police.
It was last Thursday, April 4 when workers for an airline company ticket sales stand alerted the authorities that the family’s passports seemed to have been tampered with.
Border control officers quickly came and checked the documents of the six people concerned, who included a child. They found that one of the pages on all of the passports had been altered.
The adults, aged between 19 and 69, were all charged with falsifying documentation and released on bail.
In separate incidents at the same airport, Guardia Civil security department (ADAISA) officers detained two people trying to leave the country, one with marijuana in her suitcase and another with hashish hidden in his clothing.
X-ray images of a suitcase belonging to a 58-year-old Spanish woman flying to Bremen (Germany) revealed suspicious packages which turned out to be 10 bags containing a total of 11.3 kilos of marijuana.
Furthermore, a 51-year-old Spaniard trying to board a plane to Southend in the UK was taken aside by officers at the security check for a detailed search in private.
They discovered several, walnut-sized bulges in the waist of his trousers, which were cut out to reveal 15 capsules of hashish wrapped in plastic, weighing a total of 90g.