4 Yemenis had no visas – Witness tells court

It has emerged that the four Yemenis standing trial for possessing fake passports entered the country without valid visas.

According to Detective Superintendent Mohammed Abdul Manan, an officer of the Fraud Unit of the Ghana Immigration Service at the Kotoka International Airport, the accused persons arrived in Ghana with forged passports.

They are Esmail Yahya Zeyad aka Evra Allerson, Gaafar Eissa Yahya Amer aka Ciro Carlos, Waleed Ahmed Yahya aka Debuchya Allard, all students, and Eissa Yahya Amer, a businessman.

Led in evidence in a court presided over by Aboagye Tandoh by ASP Stephen Adjei, D/Supt Manan indicated that the four Yemenis arrived with three forged French passports and one other Yemeni passport.

He stated that the forged passports were blank and glaring so much that one did not require the use of a machine to detect it.

D/Supt Manan further told the court that after receiving orders from one Dodzie Amegblenu, his shift supervisor, he and his two other men proceeded to the arrival control unit of the airport.

The immigration officer said upon arrival, he asked his men to search the accused persons’ pockets to see if they had other passports.

D/Supt Manan said the accused persons who had French passports also had Yemeni passports, adding that when they were questioned about the visas they used to board the flights, the accused persons could not tell.

He said the accused persons all had Yemeni passports different from the ones in the French passports.

D/Supt Manan stated that upon further investigations, it was revealed that the accused persons had Malaysia departure stamps in their passports.

Cross-examining the witness, Dominic Owusu Sekeyre stated that it was possible for the accused persons to have visas on arrival.

To that, the immigration officer said that depended on the person applying for the visa and that even that was done before the arrival of the supposed applicants.

D/Supt Manan denied, among other claims, that the accused persons arrived in Ghana out of ignorance.

According to the prosecution, the four on November 24 last year did forge an official document, being the Republic of France Passport Number 04417928.

The four paddies are facing an additional charge of possessing fake Emergency Entry Visas.

The accused persons were arrested by the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra last year with different names in their French passports on board Ethiopian Airline, Flight ET 920.

While undergoing immigration arrival procedures, Evra Allerson, Ciro Carlos and Debuchya were found with French passports with different names.

A further search on them revealed that all the accused persons had Yemeni passports. When the French passports with different names were examined, it was discovered that they were fake.

When they were quizzed, the accused persons mentioned one Abdulai Mohammed in Yemen as the one who secured them the French passports and gave them a phone number to call a certain Mohammed in Ghana on arrival.

The accused persons were to transit in Ghana and continue to France, then to Istanbul in Turkey.

A further examination of their Yemeni passports indicated that Allerson and Carlos had travelled several times to Djibouti before their trip to Ghana.

The accused persons have variously denied the offence.