By Gustavo Palencia
TEGUCIGALPA: Five Syrian men detained in Honduras for traveling on doctored Greek passports do not belong to "any terrorist cell", Honduran authorities said on Thursday, adding that four of them were university students.
They said the five had been fleeing conflict in Syria and had been trying to get to the United States when they were detained.
Honduran police said there were no signs of any links to last week's suicide bombings and shootings in Paris that killed 129 people. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks and there have been reports that at least one of the attackers may have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece.
The five were part of a wider group of seven Syrian nationals who acquired forged passports in Brazil and then went by land to Argentina on their way north, a U.S. government source familiar with the case said. The source also said there was no evidence to suggest the men were militants.
They took advantage of the porous Triple Frontier near well-traveled tourist destination Iguazu Falls where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet, the source said. The three countries belong to the Mercosur customs bloc, where you can cross borders with simple identity documents rather than passports.
"They probably spent the majority of their time in Brazil, because that's where they got the documents. They made their way from Brazil through Argentina pretty quickly," the U.S. government source told Reuters, adding that they were bound for the United States.
"There's a human smuggling cell that is moving people through the region."
However, another U.S. government source and local human rights officials in Honduras who had spoken to the men said they were in fact intending to settle in Guatemala, although that seems an odd choice given so many Guatemalans are trying to leave their country to settle in the United States.
Five of the men were detained late on Tuesday in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, on arrival from Costa Rica, police said. They said passports had been doctored to replace the photographs with those of the Syrians.
The Honduran immigration department named the five men as: Majd Ghanout Kousa, Fady Freej Shehada, Mazen Mikhail, Lourans Samaan and William Ghanem. It said they were aged between 19 and 30, and hailed from two Syrian cities that have been racked by violence: Homs and Hasaka.
It said one of the stolen passports belonged to a Greek woman.
They arrived in Brazil from Turkey about a week ago, the U.S. government source said.
Brazil recently extended a two-year refugee visa program for Syrians fleeing their civil war, one of the signature humanitarian efforts of President Dilma Rousseff’s otherwise modest foreign policy.
The country has taken in nearly 2,100 Syrians, a quarter of its overall refugee population. About 6,000 more were issued visas but have not made the long journey to Brazil.
A Honduran official said the five men detained there had spent several days in Costa Rica before flying into Honduras.
A sixth man was turned away from Honduras on Friday on arrival by plane from El Salvador, and was sent back. In Paraguay, police detained a seventh Syrian man who was traveling on a stolen Greek passport.
The source said that the Syrian detained in Paraguay was caught because his fake passport was missing some of the vaccinations required.
"They made it through and these are the ones we caught. We got lucky on these guys. Think about the ones we didn't' catch. It's a huge concern," the source said.
Separately, members of two Syrian families turned themselves in to U.S. authorities in Laredo, Texas, at the Mexican border, U.S. Homeland Security officials said on Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security said two men, two women and four children "presented themselves" at the port of entry and were taken into custody by Border Patrol agents before being handed over to immigration officials for processing.
At least nine undocumented Syrians were caught by Mexican authorities between January and September of 2015, according to immigration statistics from the interior ministry. During the same period last year (Jan-Sep), 8 undocumented Syrians were apprehended by Mexican authorities.
Reuters
