Baladi - Media
The offer came to a BuzzFeed News employee via a Facebook message: Are you interested in buying hundreds of legitimate identity cards issued to Syrian refugees in Germany who recently returned home to Syria?
The seller didn’t realize that the potential buyer was a journalist, but also didn’t seem to care very much when informed. He openly described the origin of the cards, explaining that hundreds of Syrian refugees had given up trying to start new lives in Germany, returned home and had found a thriving black market for documents in Turkey and Syria, often selling their German papers to the same smugglers who’d helped them flee to Europe in the first place.
It’s a quick payday for Syrian refugees, more than 500,000 of whom in recent years have been granted a range of German documents, from refugee cards to passports. And it’s a potential headache for European officials, who worry that easy access to valid documents could allow would-be militants to slip into Europe under assumed identities without the checks that normally apply to migrants from the Middle East.
German police and intelligence officials privately acknowledged the documents' availability, but declined to discuss it on the record.
Still, the availability of valid documents on a black market could make it easier for suspected militants from the Middle East or a European-born militant who wanted to return home without being detected to cross into Europe under an assumed identity. A suspected or wanted militant “wouldn’t need these papers to hold up longer than a single border crossing into the Schengen Zone,” a counterterrorism official said, referring to the 26 European countries that don’t require a visa or passport to travel among them.
The price rises for each additional document, with a valid German passport bringing the highest price.
“The more the passport can be issued with a health card, a bank card, a German identity card and a driver's license, the more the passport becomes stronger,” said an Istanbul-based smuggler who works with Syrians in both Turkey and Syria.
The smuggler said he’s willing to pay a returning Syrian nearly $600 for a valid passport, and $175 each for other documents that support that identity. He then resells those documents to anyone willing to pay — as much as $2,300 for a passport that requires no alterations — “if we find someone who looks like the person in the picture,” the smuggler said. If the photographs need to be changed, the price drops.
Source: Buzz Feed News