Given the increased frequency of passengers and vehicles during the tourist season at the borders of BiH, the Border Police of BiH appealed to citizens to check the validity of travel documents before traveling abroad.
“We recommend to check the period of validity of travel documents and not to use travel documents that were previously reported to the authorities as lost or stolen,” as said in the statement of the Border Police of BiH. They added that they made the appeal in order to reduce the retention time and allow smooth crossing of the border.
They emphasized that in the period from the 1st of January 2015 to the 22nd of June 2016 they temporarily seized a total of 361 BH document which was identified as not valid for crossing the border during border checks. These are documents that are available in the database of IDDEEA, INTERPOL and the police agencies as invalid / canceled, lost / stolen or documents for which search has been issued.
“When it comes to the type of documents, they seized 180 passports and 179 identity cards. In the same period was discovered 986 documents that were claimed by Interpol. The largest number of seized personal documents belonged to citizens of: Croatia (556), Germany (146), Slovenia (51), Austria (34), Spain (34), Poland (30), Switzerland (23), Montenegro (12), Serbia (11), Italy (11) and the Netherlands (10). Other seized documents belonged to citizens of Andorra, Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, India, Ireland, Cyprus, Latvia, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, Great Britain and the United States,” as added in the statement.
They also stated that in the first five months of this year they temporarily seized 69 documents in 54 cases that are suspected to have been falsified: they confiscated 14 passports, 12 CEMT licenses, 13 green cards, 8 ID cards, 7 driving licenses and 2 traffic permits, 3 visas etc.
(Source: Radiosarajevo.ba)