ZAKHO, Kurdistan Region - Zakho police arrested a man with a bag full of forged passports from multiple countries and other identity documents. He is accused of doing the forgeries with his father-in-law who remains at large. According to police, the two accused have been forging passports, visas, and other documents for ten years. “According to the information we have obtained, the main perpetrator smuggles people out of the [Kurdistan] Region and forges passports as well as issuing forged passports and all other official documents,” Nahshat Salman, head of relations and media affairs office for Zakho police, told Rudaw on Thursday. The son-in-law has been arrested but his co-accused is believed to be living in Istanbul. Zakho officials said they are working with Interpol to arrest him too. About 200 forged passports of Germany, France, Russia, Iran, Iran, Syria and Turkey were seized by police. The son-in-law denied the charges. Speaking to Rudaw, he said his father-in-law sent him a bag of passports to hold onto until they were collected by their owners. Many people never collected the documents and the son-in-law did not want to hold onto them. “After I realized that they are not good things, I tried to do something. So, I asked my father-in-law through a phone call to take them. He said he would send someone to take them,” but no one showed up, he said. The men were paid between $11,000 and $15,000 for each passport, according to police. Zakho authorities said this is the fourth and biggest forgery case they have seen in 2021.
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