Leading Kuwaiti named in passport forgeries hearing

Two Middle East men accused of a passport manufacturing scam were "sacrificial lambs" to New Zealand trade with Kuwait, a defence lawyer said yesterday.

The jury at the Auckland District Court has heard that the detective leading the inquiry was refused permission from his superiors to travel to Kuwait to investigate the possible involvement of an influential Kuwaiti in the fraud.

Fahad Jaber Ajeil, 29, and Riyad Hamied Sultan, 30, are accused of possessing implements for forgery, forging documents, possessing a false passport, altering documents, making documents by reproduction and conspiracy to commit forgery.

The Crown says the scheme involved hundreds of passports and other travel documents relating to 17 countries.

The conspiracy charge names a Dr Salam Abu-Shaaban as being involved.

In his closing address to the jury yesterday Ajeil's lawyer, Anthony Rogers, said that Abu-Shaaban was at the hub, masterminding and orchestrating the conspiracy.

In previous evidence, Detective Simon Williamson said that his superiors had prevented him taking his inquiries to Kuwait.

He said the people "much higher up than me" did not want him "stuffing up" inquiries in Kuwait.

Mr Rogers contrasted the case with that of the Israeli passport scandal where the Prime Minister said, when the Herald first broke the story, that there would be a strong response at the appropriate time.

Mr Rogers said that despite the matter being raised at a high level within the police, Mr Williamson was not allowed to go to Kuwait to pursue his investigations.

It was inconceivable that it would not have been raised at the highest levels within the Government.

He said that the PM's silence in this case was deafening by contrast with the Israeli matter.

Mr Rogers said it was because New Zealand had little trade with Israel, while there was a substantial sheep trade with Kuwait.

He said that the Government could have put pressure on the Kuwaitis to have Dr Abu-Shaaban's offices searched.

Mr Williamson could have led them right to his door. No doubt, he said, there would have been a huge amount of information there as to the guilt or innocence of the two accused.

Mr Rogers said that Ajeil was the unwitting victim of a clan member who cynically used him and set him up.

On the Crown's own evidence, Ajeil had low computer skills, hardly the sort of person who could run the sophisticated international passport making fraud alleged.

Nor was there any lavish lifestyle, though the Crown maintained that there were large sums of money involved.

He warned the jury to avoid guilt by association, whether through the computer hard drive or through emails from Abu-Shaaban.

Sultan's lawyer, David Niven, said that there was little evidence against his client, who knew nothing about any crime.

While the police might have been suspicious about his email account, it could have been used by others in the sharing Bedoun community and did not prove anything against Sultan.

Earlier, prosecutor Ross Burns said that the pair produced passports on order from Abu-Shaaban for money.

They did not do it out of kindness to help the oppressed Bedouns, stateless people who lived between Kuwait and Iraq.

"They made hay while the sun shone, exploiting the exploited," he said.


Herald investigation: Passport