Despite using real passports from Malaysia, a group of five Sri Lankan citizens who were attempting to make it to Europe via Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport was busted after immigration officials figured out that the passports they were using were not their own.
“They came using their original Sri Lankan passports to enter Indonesia, then they destroyed their passports and tried to use Malaysian passports to go to European countries,” said Enang Syamsi, head of the Soekarno-Hatta Airport Immigration Office, today as quoted by Kompas.
Enang said the Sri Lankans had gotten the passports from a human trafficking syndicate in Malaysia that matched customers to passports made for people who looked similar to them. He said their initial investigations suggested the passports were either stolen or purchased from Malaysians of Bangladeshi, Nepalese, or Sri Lankan ancestry.
The airport immigration director said investigators were coordinate with the Malaysian Embassy in Indonesia to develop the case. He said that no Indonesians had yet been implicated in the human trafficking scheme.
