07 members of two Syrian families who tried to escape to Rome, Italy using forged United Arab Emirates passports have been arrested by the immigration department officials at Katunayake Airport this morning (12).
Two families consisting of three adults and four children who lived in Syria have been arrested.
The group had come to the airport immigration counters after completing the airline clearance, and upon the suspicion of the immigration officers working there, they referred the group to the border inspection unit along with the submitted documents.
It has been confirmed that these passports were forged during the technical inspections carried out there.
After that, during the interrogations of these Syrian nationals, the group admitted that they had paid US$2,000 each to a broker and arranged these passports in Turkey.
This group of Syrian nationals first came to Malaysia and then came to Sri Lanka and then they had planned to go to India and then flee to Italy.