The Directorate General for Passports has discovered 554 fake Haj permits at various checkpoints in the Kingdom recently. In the first incident, officials stopped a convoy of buses at Al-Hijra Checkpoint in Madina which were transporting 350 Asian women to the holy sites. Four Saudi youths were driving the buses and were acting as guides for the illegal group. All the forged permits were seized. This was disclosed by Brig. Gen. Ayidh Al-Luqmani Al-Harbi, Commander of the Passports Department's Forces for Haj. He said the security forces will double their efforts over the coming days to prevent persons without legal permits from entering the holy sites. He said over 100 forged Haj permits were found at Al-Zaimah Checkpoint in Makkah under the name of “Faidh Al-Islam Group”, a fake company. In another incident, 100 forged permits were seized under the name of “Al-Shams Al-Tayibah Group” for Asian pilgrims coming from Riyadh. They were discovered before they could enter the holy sites. Three Saudi youths were working as guides for the group. All the pilgrims on board the buses were illegal and the guides wanted to transport them to the holy sites under the names and logos of official Haj groups. Al-Harbi said the department's teams also managed to uncover four forged Haj permits of pilgrims traveling on land from Kuwait. Al-Harbi warned violators that officers would arrest anyone using illegal means to enter the holy sites. Recently the department had also arrested a number of Asian expatriates who tried to cross Al-Rehaili Checkpoint using forged identification papers. A total of 1,120 people have been arrested in total for trying to enter the Kingdom illegally. __
