Asylum seeker buys fake passport for €500

An asylum seeker from Sudan who tried to leave Malta for Naples using a fake passport with a photo of someone else has been jailed for six months.

25-year-old Adam Eldi Abubacer was arraigned before magistrate Monica Vella on Tuesday morning, charged with the creation, possession and use of a forged document.

Inspector Darren Buhagiar told the court that the accused had arrived in Malta by boat in 2014, and subsequently applied for asylum. He was arrested yesterday at the airport as he tried to board a flight to Naples using a “totally counterfeit passport”, the police
inspector said.

Abubacer had told the police that he had bought the fake document for €500 from someone whom he had met only once, in a parking
lot in Marsa. He couldn’t recall the name of this person, said Inspector Buhagiar.

As the accused had sought asylum he cannot be ordered to return to Sudan. “This country accepts asylum seekers but not the presentation of false passports,” said the inspector.

On punishment, defence lawyer Joe Brincat argued that the man has a clean criminal record and had been fleeced out of €500 by an unscrupulous person.

The Court warned Abubacer that he could go to prison, before once again asking him whether he was confirming his guilty plea. He said he
was, adding that he now knew what he did was wrong.

Abubacer was found guilty on his own admission, but the court, in view of his early guilty plea and absence of criminal record, condemned him to the minimum punishment at law for the charges: six months imprisonment.