False UK passports made in Pakistan

Posing a major challenge to counter-terrorism efforts, making of forged British passports has been found to be the “most prevalent” in Pakistan with a US government agency recommending steps to check overseas travel by terrorists using such travel papers.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO), which sent a team to Pakistan and three other countries for field assessment, found gaps in four key areas — sharing of information on terrorists, use of fraudulent travel papers, passport issuance security and corruption in passport issuance and immigration agencies.

The report quoted a former Pakistani official responsible for immigration enforcement to say that “fraudulent British passports are the most prevalent type of fraudulent travel documents in Pakistan”.

“Since British citizens are not required to obtain visas to travel to many countries, a terrorist could use one of these fraudulent passports to travel to many countries without further background checks”, the report, titled

‘Combating Terrorism’ and presented to the US Congress last month, said.

Taliban burn un-Islamic cloth

A Taliban group in Pakistan on Tuesday burned a huge quantity of cloth taken from shopkeepers, saying it was too thin to be made into suitably modest garments

The Islamist extremists stormed shops in Wana, the main town of the lawless South Waziristan tribal region, which borders Afghanistan, and made a bonfire of the cloth in a public area near the bazaar

Shopkeeper Rahimullah Khan told AFP that at least eight armed men burst into his premises and took away bundles of raw cloth that they said was too thin to make respectable clothing.

A local official in Wana who declined to be named said the perpetrators were local Taliban.

First Published: Jul 27, 2011 00:17 IST