Honduras detains Syrians bound for U.S. with doctored Greek passports
World | Wed Nov 18, 2015 10:52pm EST
Honduran authorities said on Wednesday they had intercepted six Syrian nationals traveling on doctored Greek passports in the past week, including five who had been trying to reach the United States.
Police said there were no signs of any links to last week's deadly attacks in Paris that killed 129 people. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting and suicide bombing assault.
Five of the men were detained late on Tuesday in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, on arrival from Costa Rica, and had been planning to head to the border with neighboring Guatemala, police said. They said passports had been doctored to replace the photographs with those of the Syrians.
Anibal Baca, a Honduras police spokesman, said the five were trying to reach the United States.
A sixth man was turned away on Friday on arrival by plane from El Salvador, and was sent back. They are the first such cases of attempted illegal entry by Syrians into Honduras since the Central American country started compiling records in 2010.
However, the case appears to form part of a spate of such incidents. Police in the former Dutch Caribbean colony of St Maarten on Saturday arrested three men they believed to be Syrians who arrived on a flight from Haiti and were traveling on false Greek passports.
In Paraguay, police detained a Syrian man on Sunday who was traveling on a stolen Greek passport.
Reports that at least one of the Paris attackers may have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece prompted several Western countries to begin to question their willingness to take in refugees from war-torn Syria.
Republican Senator James Risch of Idaho said he found the news "very troubling", and wondered whether the men formed part of a militant sleeper cell to be planted in the United States, or whether it was something far more innocent.