I have read first two reports: by
Kateland and by colleague
Elder of Ziyon, both based on a
Maariv article (in Hebrew). The essence of the reports is that:
...three Iranians were caught at an airport in Seychelles trying to use stolen Israeli passports. The Iranians were sent back on a flight to Nairobi, Kenya, from where they came.
Seychelles authorities passed the information to Israeli authorities, who found that the passports were stolen from Israelis who traveled to Thailand last year.
The general concern, which I fully share:
Israeli authorities fear that this was the precursor to a terror attack in the archipelago, which has been advertising heavily to attract Israelis on Passover vacation this year. Charter airlines now go directly to Seychelles from Israel.
Maariv also carries an attractive picture of the island:
I am not sure, though, about its relevance, but why not? In addition, Maariv claims that 15,000 (fifteen thousand) Israeli passports disappear every year. Wow...
Anyhow, I have decided to wait for a while with that story, and indeed, a
new article in Ynet (in English this time) looks somewhat better researched.
In the past few weeks, more then 10 Iranian nationals were caught carrying forged Israeli passports, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday. The information came from reports relayed to Israeli embassies in Japan, Thailand, and India. In the last several months, Pakistani and Turkish citizens were also caught with fake Israeli passports.
And the reason seems to be not necessarily related to the terrorism business, rather to business business:
The Israeli passport is considered to be one of…