Pakistan to introduce biometric machines to detect fake passports

Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has decided to introduce machines at the Islamabad airport to detect fake passports, a media report said Saturday.

An FIA immigration official said that biometric machines will be integrated to enable its immigration staff detect "the most sophisticated fake passports", Dawn online reported.

That would improve the working of the FIA staff at the passport control desk at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport, the official said.

The biometric system verifies the identity of a person on the basis of his or her finger prints.

The decision of introducing these machines followed after an incident earlier this month when 10 Afghan nationals took a flight to London and were transferred after the scandal of their fraudulent travel documents unfolded after their landing at Heathrow airport.

Few FIA officials have been suspended including the two who were manning the immigration desk.