Trade in fake Syrian travel documents raises concerns that passport was carried to France by more than one person

A passport found near the body of the one of the Paris suicide bombers was used by a man who travelled into Europe on the refugee trail through Greece and Serbia, officials in those countries said.



The discovery raised as many questions as it answered, because it was unclear whether the passport was real or fake and whether the bomber had used it to get to Paris himself or acquired it illegally from someone else.

On 3 October, a man using the name Ahmed Almohamed arrived on the small Greek island of Leros and registered as a refugee with the Syrian passport.

Why Syrian refugee passport found at Paris attack scene must be treated with caution Read more

The traveller apparently crossed to a neighbouring island and there boarded a ferry to Athens on 5 October, buying a ticket together with one other man, travel receipts published by the Greek newspaper Protothema show.

Within two days he had apparently passed through northern Greece to Macedonia and reached the border crossing with Serbia.



“One of the suspected terrorists, A.A., who is of interest to the French security agencies, was registered on the Presevo border crossing on October 7 this year, where he formally sought asylum,” the Serbian interior ministry said in a statement.

The Serbian newspaper Blic published a photo of the passport, with the details clearly visible, showing that the holder was a 25-year-old man from Idlib in north-east Syria, which fell to rebels in September.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Serbian media named one of the Paris terrorists as Syrian natiional Ahmed Almohamed, whose passport was found in Paris. Taken from Blic Photograph: Blic

The document’s discovery amid the bloodied aftermath of multiple bombings at the Stade de France was seized on by opponents of Europe’s refugee resettlement scheme as an urgent argument in favour of tighter border controls.

French authorities have yet to say whether they have managed to match fingerprints to those registered along with the passport in Greece. Even if that link were eventually made, it would not confirm either the man’s identity or nationality, as there is a thriving trade in fake or altered Syrian passports.

Syrians have also reported losing their documents in muggings or scams during the arduous trek across Europe, so the passport could potentially have arrived in Greece with one man and in Paris with another.

Fingerprints stored in the registration network by European countries trying to monitor the flow of migrants and refugees may hold the clue to confirming who was travelling on the passport as it was brought westwards.



If it was still with the same person, he most likely travelled north and east from Serbia to Croatia – because Hungary had by then shut its border with Serbia – and then to Austria via Slovenia or a different Hungarian border.

Their passage would have been smoothed by the governments of several Balkan and south European countries, which had decided to help people pass through as swiftly as possible on their way to countries farther north and west.

Any trail of registration or fingerprints would probably end in Germany or Austria, where most refugees request to stay or from where they try to slip away to other countries in which they have relatives or friends staying unofficially.

Even if the fingerprints do show that the man who landed on Leros was involved in the Paris attacks, “Ahmed Almohamed” might have purchased a new identity before setting off to Europe.

The passport appeared to be fake, a US intelligence analyst told CBS, because it had the wrong number of digits and a name that did not match the photograph. If the passport does turn out to be fake, it will raise uncomfortable questions for Balkan countries that ushered its holder farther north into Europe.

The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned fellow Europeans on Sunday not to abandon plans to resettle refugees across the continent, after calls by Poland to scrap the scheme in the wake of the Paris attacks.

The European Union’s eastern-most members have been furious over the refugee resettlement plan agreed in October, calling instead for a stronger outer border.

“I would like to invite those in Europe who are trying to change the migration agenda we have adopted ... to be serious about this and not to give in to these basic reactions. I don’t like it,” Juncker told reporters as world leaders met at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey.

Germany’s defence minister also warned against conflating terrorism with the refugee crisis.

“Terrorism is so well organised that it does not need to take the difficult route taken by the refugees, who risk their lives by crossing the high seas,” Ursula von der Leyen told reporters. “So I would advise that we be cautious about mixing the idea of terror with refugees.”

Another passport found at one of the sites of the Paris attacks, and initially linked to the suicide squads, highlighted the dangers of leaping to conclusions in the race to identify the attackers.

Friends of Waleed Abdel Razzak spent much of Friday night and Saturday searching for the 27-year-old Egyptian, who went missing at the football game.

Their frantic efforts ended with both sadness and relief when someone found him alive but severely injured by a bomb in an intensive care unit in a nearby hospital.

But his passport had not made it into the ambulance with him and soon after it was discovered, the French newspaper Le Point claimed - in a report that since appears to have been taken down - that he was one of the attackers.

Egypt’s ambassador to France said Abdel-Razzaq had been incorrectly described as a suspect, when he was actually a victim of the attackers. He was in France to support his brother who was seeking treatment for cancer. “No charges have been directed at Abdel-Razzak at all,” Badawi was quoted saying by the Egyptian newspaper Ahram Online.