RAWALPINDI: Pakistan’s consul general in the US city of Houston appeared in an accountability court here on Monday as a witness and confirmed that fake Pakistani passports had been issued to Indian citizens.
Aqil Naeem told Judge Wamiq Javaid that the passports had been issued by the Houston consulate as alleged by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in its reference against former consul general Ghulam Rasool Baloch and others.
He said that cases of misappropriation had been mentioned in the report of the audit of the consulate’s financial record.
He said the record of all people who had submitted additional fees to obtain passports from the consulate was available. The court put off the hearing till Jan 19.
The foreign affairs ministry had referred to NAB on March 28, 2008, a report received from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation that about 300 passports had been issued by the consulate on fake or incomplete documents.
A reference was filed against Ghulam Rasool, Assistant Consul General Mohammad Naeem and travel agent Imran Lalpuri for issuing passports to Indian citizens Aziz Moosa, Salim Ali and Abdul Sadiqas Sultan Abdullah.
An American passport bearing the name Syed Nazar Ali was found after the 1993 terrorist attacks in Mumbai and investigations revealed that he was actually an Indian national, Aziz Moosa.
During investigation it was found that several fake passports had been issued from the consulate.
The former consul general’s lawyer S.A. Mehmood Sadozai argued that the prosecution had merely relied on information provided by the FBI and had not investigated the case.
Replying to a question by the court, NAB prosecutors said they had examined FBI officials but did not record their statements.
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