Costa Rica deported two men who tried to enter Costa Rica over the weekend using well-crafted false European documents and who officials fear may have had links to terrorists, the country's immigration director said Monday. It was unclear where the men were Monday. Immigration Director Marco Badilla said Costa Rica chose to deport the two, who may have been Jordanians, "for convenience, because we do not want to have people like that here" and to avoid the bother of a court case. "If they are detained, in order to accuse them of using a false document, that's a slow judicial process," he said.
Badilla said the men were expelled Sunday on a flight to Honduras with a stop in El Salvador. They were supposedly headed to Canada, though it was unclear if they had disembarked in any of those countries. "We cannot confirm that we are dealing with terrorists, but neither can we discount the possibility that they have some link to that type of group," he told The Associated Press. Badilla said the men were found to have Jordanian passports identifying them as Ismail Mohamad Nassar and Fawas Ne Meh Mousa. They had presented immigration officers with documents from Belgium and France identifying them as Maximilien O. Regout L.R.M and Sylvain Marcel Hurel Yannic.
"We classified them as presumed Jordanians because we did not trust any of the documents they carried, which were adulterated or false, but of very high quality," Badilla said. Badilla said the men told officials they had flown from Jordan to Spain on Sept. 5, and then traveled to Cuba and Guatemala. They said they purchased false passports there and then went by road to Honduras. "I don't believe that version is reliable because the route is very complicated. What's more, they said they paid $1,000 for the documents, but they were very fine work. It can't be that they were charged that," Badilla said. He said he was also suspicious because they were "very calm, very cold," and they tried to bribe agents at the airport so that they could fly to Canada using the false European documents. He said officials had notified the U.S. government as well as the international police agency Interpol. Elaine Samson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy here, said she knew about the case only from news media reports, but said Costa Rica was not required to notify the United States since the men were not headed there. |