Thailand, which came into spotlight after it emerged that two unknown passengers on vanished Malaysia Airlines flight used passports stolen in the kingdom, today said the documents stolen last year were never used by the suspects to leave the country.
The commander of the investigation division at the Immigration Bureau General Warawut Taweechaikarn said the passports were stolen and taken out of Thailand without being used at immigration checkpoints.
He said criminals faced difficulties in producing fake passports due to sophisticated anti-counterfeiting techniques, so they resorted to buying real passports from gangs of thieves, which targeted foreign tourists in Thailand.
The gangs would replace the passport holders' photos and alter certain information in the documents before using them, he was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post.
Fears that terrorism may be linked to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 arose after Austria and Italy said passports used by two male passengers were stolen from their citizens. Malaysia said it had identified two of the illegal-passport holders as non-Asians.
"We are trying to ascertain if the two holders of false passports entered Malaysia, legally or illegally," Malaysian police inspector-general Khalid Abu Bakar said today.
Interpol said in a statement that at least two passports recorded in its database, one Austrian and one Italian, were used by passengers on the flight after being reported stolen in Thailand.
Two people using Italian and Austrian passports on the flight, Luigi Maraldi, 37, and Christian Kozel, 30, had consecutive ticket numbers, according to the Chinese e-ticket verification system Travelsky.
Both tickets were issued on March 6, according to the website of China Southern Airlines Co, which was a code-share on the Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
