ZGram - 7/25/2004 - "Details of the New Zealand Passport Scam"

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Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

July 25, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

There is movie potential in the story below:


[Start]

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/israeli_agents.html

Updated July 23, 2004

Israeli Agents Arrested in Plot To Forge Passports

Mossad Targeted Handicapped; Kiwi PM Breaks Diplomatic Ties

By Fred Lingel

The jailing of two Israeli Mossad agents in New Zealand for stealing 
the identities of cerebral palsy victims has exposed a wider 
international passport scam by the spy agency.

On July 14, 2004, two Mossad agents-Uriel Kelman, 31, and Eli Cara, 
51-were jailed for six months and fined $100,000 for fraudulently 
using the Cerebral Palsy Society to obtain passports. The New Zealand 
authorities are still seeking two other agents. One is Zev William 
Barkan, 37, who fled New Zealand when the scam was uncovered, and an 
unnamed man, who is believed to be hiding out somewhere in the 
country.

When the Mossad team was unmasked in March 2004, New Zealand's Prime 
Minister Helen Clark privately asked Israel for an apology and was 
rebuffed. To add insult to injury, the Israeli government denied 
having agents in New Zealand.

Within days of the jailing of Kelman and Cara, Clark, under public 
pressure to retaliate against Israel, launched a verbal and 
diplomatic assault. She accused Israel of breaching international 
law, as well as her country's sovereignty. Her greatest worry, she 
told the media, was that the Mossad actions placed New Zealand 
passport holders at risk when they traveled abroad.

She immediately suspended diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv and 
instituted a new rule that will require visiting Israeli diplomats to 
apply for visas before they can enter her country. She also canceled 
Foreign Ministry consultations between the two nations scheduled for 
later this year. In a major snub, she declared that a proposed visit 
by the Israeli president would not be allowed to take place.

New Zealanders were equally angered by Jewish organizations that 
attacked the prime minister and accused the New Zealand government of 
overreaction and "anti-Semitism." It was not lost on New Zealanders 
that Israel regards them as anti-Israeli, following the visit last 
year of the New Zealand foreign minister to Yasser Arafat in 
Palestine. In contrast, the rest of the world views New Zealand as a 
small, neutral nation.

The Mossad scam began in 2003 when Kelman, Cara, Barkan and an 
unidentified agent arrived in the New Zealand capital, Auckland. 
First to arrive was Cara, who had been running a bogus travel agency 
for three years in Sydney, the Australian capital.

Cara had lived in Sydney with his wife and three children, but 
subsequent inquiries into the travel agency could not turn up an 
address for the company. Between October 2000 and March 2004, Cara is 
known to have made several trips to New Zealand, using two Israeli 
passports, one of them a replacement passport.

By all accounts, Cara was the front man for the team, with the task 
of arranging accommodations and identifying suitable victims to be 
scammed.

Barkan jetted into Auckland in November 2003 with a U.S. passport 
that identified him as of Israeli origin. Before leaving the country 
three weeks later, he had acquired from Cara the identity of a 
cerebral palsy patient.

So meticulous was Cara's research into the victim that he had used 
the married and maiden name of the victim's mother to get a birth 
certificate, even though she had separated from the victim's father 
in 2001 and was based in Britain. With the birth certificate, it was 
easy to acquire Social Security documents. Barkan cleverly used the 
documents to make a doctor's appointment. The ploy was to get to know 
the doctor and later exploit him.

Barkan left the country after that appointment and Kelman flew into 
Auckland, rented a car and checked into a hotel owned by the Kiwi 
International chain. Barkan's role was to help Cara do research on 
potential handicapped victims, learning where they lived and when 
they were born.

The essential ingredient of their strategy was to choose people who, 
because of their disabilities, would not have passports and would 
never travel abroad.

Barkan flew back to Auckland on March 6, 2004 and immediately visited 
the same doctor, pretending he had a minor ailment. His real purpose 
quickly became apparent.

Now that the doctor had seen him a second time and had clearly 
accepted his bogus identity, Barkan moved to the next level. Barkan 
told the doctor he was soon to be married in Australia but had never 
traveled abroad before and urgently needed a passport. He produced a 
passport form and pleaded with the doctor to witness it. Unwittingly 
the doctor agreed.

Barkan had photos taken of him and, with the passport application and 
other documents, applied to the Department of Internal Affairs for a 
passport. Meanwhile, he rented an apartment, telling neighbors he was 
called "Jay" and was in the country to attend a sailing course. In 
order to explain his accent, which implied he was Canadian or 
American, he said his family ran a business in Washington.

In his urgency to get the passport, he made the mistake of phoning 
the Department of Internal Affairs and talked to an astute passport 
official, Officer Ian Tingey.

Barkan's well-spoken manner and especially his accent immediately 
struck Tingey, who asked him how he had acquired such an accent. 
Barkan replied that he had "mixed with Canadians."

The reply made Tingey suspicious, and he decided to investigate the 
passport application. Tingey quickly found a phone number for the 
family name Barkan had given him. In a subsequent call to the 
cerebral palsy victim's father, the family explained that their son 
had never applied for a passport and could not travel.

Tingey passed on his findings to the Auckland police, and an 
investigation was launched.

Unaware they had a problem, Cara and Kelman began arranging for 
delivery of Barkan's new passport. Cara phoned the passport office 
and requested that it be delivered to a downtown company specializing 
in travel documents. Later that day, Kelman phoned the travel 
company, provided the address of the apartment Barkan had rented and 
requested that when the package arrived, containing the passport, it 
should be sent by courier to the apartment.

Undercover New Zealand police officers delivered the package to the 
apartment, but no one was at home. They learned from the building 
superintendent that an "ex-tenant" had given him a number to phone 
when the package arrived. It was the number for a cab company.

One of the undercover cops spotted a suspicious man in a cafe across 
the street from the apartment building who, he believed, was watching 
them. It was Cara, using a cell phone to contact other members of the 
Mossad team to tell them the passport had arrived.

The undercover cops left the building but maintained surveillance on 
it and also on the cafe. Within an hour, a cab arrived to pick up the 
package, and police followed it.

The taxi driver, who was not a part of the scam, was directed by 
telephone to a street address with instructions to phone when he 
reached the location.

Meanwhile, Kelman, cell phone in hand, was waiting at the location 
and spotted police as the taxi came into his line of sight. He threw 
the phone into the bushes and ran away. Police pursued him and seized 
both him and the cell phone.

At that moment, the phone began ringing, and one of the undercover 
cops answered it. Somewhat to his amusement, it was the taxi driver 
asking for instructions on whom to give the package to.

Across the city at the cafe, Cara was also arrested.

Barkan, who may have been hovering nearby, fled the country that same 
day, and the fourth member of the team went into hiding.

Kelman and Cara denied knowing each other, but their cell phone 
records proved otherwise and also linked them to Barkan.

Mossad's eagerness to go to such lengths to obtain New Zealand 
passports was linked to its need to move agents through Arab 
countries without arousing suspicion and to insert them into 
non-government organizations-some of them UN controlled-and into 
companies with overseas contracts. The spy agency knew that New 
Zealand was regarded as friendly to the Palestinian cause and as an 
"inoffensive" nation in the eyes of Muslims.

New Zealand passports would allow agents to acquire many other 
valuable documents, including birth certificates, marriage 
certificates, death certificates of relatives and Social Security 
cards. Through that process agents could establish completely new 
identities, permitting them to travel through the Asian-Pacific 
region, where there are large Muslim populations and many Al Qaeda 
supporters.

More importantly, an agent in possession of a New Zealand passport 
could travel freely throughout Australia and apply for British 
citizenship, which carries a European passport, enabling unhindered 
access to EU countries.

But the New Zealand scam highlighted a wider international strategy 
by Mossad. In 1997, Israel was forced to apologize to Canada after 
two Mossad agents, using fake Canadian passports, failed in a bid to 
assassinate the Hamas leader Khalid Meshal in Amman, the Jordanian 
capital. They used a nerve agent in an aerosol can and sprayed it at 
Meshal but only managed to use half its content. As they fled, they 
were arrested.

Meshal was rushed to a hospital and placed on a respirator while the 
two Israeli agents-Barry Beads and John Kendall-were interrogated. 
Later that day, King Hussein of Jordan, the late father of the 
present king, phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hussein threatened Netanyahu that he would place Beads and Kendall on 
trial if the Mossad did not immediately provide an antidote to save 
Meshal's life. He warned that if Israel did not cooperate, the 
agents' confessions to interrogators would be sent to U.S. Secretary 
of State Madeleine Albright, their Canadian passports would be made 
available to the media, and the whole matter would be turned into an 
international incident.

Hours later, an Israeli military plane flew into Jordan with the 
antidote, and Meshal's life was saved.

The Mossad agents, Beads and Kendall (not their real names), were 
handed over to the Canadian Embassy in Amman and then driven across 
the Allenby Bridge linking Jordan to Israel.

After the episode, Israel assured Canada that the Mossad would never 
again use Canadian documents, but they have not kept their promise. 
In response, the Canadian authorities have been silent.

A file on the New Zealand affair has been sent to the Canadians but 
it is not expected that they will investigate if Barkan and his team 
had ever been in Canada. The same goes for Australia, which has not 
commented, even though Cara, one of the New Zealand scam artists, had 
been based in the Australian capital for several years, running a 
bogus travel agency.

Presently, Australia is one of George Bush's major allies in the Iraq 
coalition. With the United States remaining quiet about the New 
Zealand affair, it is expected Australia will ignore the issue.

Mossad's strategy of scamming passports, even from cerebral palsy 
victims, has not shocked those who have studied the spy agency. It is 
believed the Mossad has also targeted other small nations regarded as 
"inoffensive" in the Arab world-nations like Sweden, Denmark, 
Belgium, Ireland and Norway.

[END]