BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – The owner of a passport found near the body of a suicide bomber in the attacks on Paris passed through a migrant corridor known for its lax controls and ease in obtaining transit documents as a flood of asylum-seekers surges toward Western Europe.
The Syrian passport was registered in October in Serbia and Croatia, two of the countries on the corridor crossing the Balkans. The owner was allowed to proceed because he passed what is essentially the only test in place – he had no international arrest warrant against him, police in both states said Sunday.
It was not clear whether the passport was real or fake, or whether it belonged to the suicide bomber. But trafficking in fake Syrian passports has increased as hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty try to get refugee status, the chief of the European Union border agency Frontex has said.
Most of those who enter countries on the so-called Balkan corridor for migrants – Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia – are registered with authorities. Their data are checked against Interpol records, and their fingerprints and photos are taken. But, many people tell officials that they’ve lost their identity papers, and they can give false names and other information, including their country of origin.
A large majority of migrants declare themselves as Syrians from the war-torn country, although they have no documents to prove it, Serbian police say. Being Syrian refugees have a better chance of getting asylum in Germany than those classified as economic migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan.