Investigation agency arrests Iranians traveling to UAE on fake Pakistani passports

Pakistani security force personnel stand guard at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi on March 30, 2015. (AFP/File)

• Pakistani immigration authorities stopped both suspects while traveling to Sharjah from Karachi via a foreign airline 
• In 2021, Pakistan nabbed 10 Iranians who were traveling to Qatar on fake Pakistani identity cards, travel documents 

KARACHI: Pakistani immigration authorities on Friday arrested two Iranian nationals for traveling to the United Arab Emirate (UAE) on fake Pakistani travel documents, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) told Arab News. 
The suspects, Amir Ali and Abdul Samad, were traveling to Sharjah from the Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport via a foreign airline. 
Documents of the suspects seen by Arab News showed they had single-entry tourist visa of the Emirates on their fake Pakistani passports. 
“Two Iranian nationals using fake Pakistani traveling documents have been arrested from Karachi airport,” the FIA spokesperson told Arab News. 
“Both have been shifted to the Anti-Human Traffic Circle (AHTC), Karachi.” 
In September last year, the FIA had arrested ten Iranians in what the agency said was a “comprehensive crackdown” in different parts of the southern port city of Karachi. 
The FIA statement said the foreign nationals had been able to obtain Pakistan identity cards and travel documents with the help of Pakistani and Iranian agents and were traveling to Qatar. 
In 2018, 11 Iranian nationals were arrested at the Turbat airport in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province for possessing fake Pakistani identity cards and passports, which they had been using to travel to the Middle East since 2014.