An Iraqi man who had kidnapped his own children from his Swedish wife has been caught in Greece. The man was driving a car with license plates from Sweden. He tried to smuggle his children. He was caught at the border crossing Kipoi, while he was trying to enter Turkey.
The 36-year-old man was reportedly planning to travel to Turkey and from there to Iraq.
He had hidden his children under clothes and blankets.
During the car control, Greek border guards were surprised to find a 9-year-old boy and two girls aged 3 and 7 under a pile of clothes and blankets.
Furthermore, the man was in possession of two Swedish passports that belonged to other persons.
As seems that the Iraqi was first arrested due to the false passports and the police found the children during a car search afterwards.
The children have Swedish citizenship and the authorities of the Scandinavian country had issued a warning about their disappearance. Furthermore, Swedish authorities had issued a European arrest warrant against the man for having kidnapped his own children.
the man was taken to prosecutor in Alexandroupolis, procedures for his extradition to Sweden as well as for the return of the children have already being launched.
PS how many countries did the man cross before reaching Greece?
This suggests that Greek border controls are effective, since they detected the false passports. Even if he drove through as many Schengen borders as possible (and Sweden is not in Schengen, but is part of the Nordic Travel Area) he would still have had to pass through a minimum of three Balkan countries to the North of Greece. This means that the Balkan countries are completely useless with their border checks. In the case of Greece, he was exiting Greece – which also implies that he was able to get into Greece with the fake passports.
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Basically, totally pathetic border controls when leaving and exiting the Schengen zone. The European Commission should be very concerned at how useless all of their theoretical legal controls are.
Correction: Sweden is in Schengen. Nobody can remember which EU countries are in or out of Schengen, the eurozone, etc. It’s such a mess.