20091210

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — South Africa has suspended dozens of immigration officials being investigated for giving South African citizenship to foreigners, mainly from Pakistan, the government said Thursday.

The move comes months after Britain started requiring visas from South Africans, charging terrorists and criminals were exploiting the availability of stolen or forged South African passports to gain access to other countries.

“The fraudulent registration of births of foreigners constitutes a serious threat to the national security of our country,” South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said in a statement Thursday.

She said the scheme allowed “fraudsters” to apply for South African passports that could be used for “nefarious activities abroad.”

She said that South African investigations would ensure that all those implicated “face the full might of the law.”

South Africa said nearly a year ago that steps had been taken to prevent corrupt officials from issuing bogus passports.

Home Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said Thursday that 59 officials have been suspended in the past two weeks for issuing South African birth certificates to foreigners. He said it is not clear how many such certificates have been issued nor whether any have been used to get a passport.

He said most recipients were adults from Pakistan and he said it appeared to be the work of “criminal syndicates.”

In February, Britain said it was requiring visas for South Africans, who previously did not need them. British security and intelligence officials warned of an increasing risk of Islamic extremists using South Africa as a transit point and venue to plan plots.

They said future attacks on Britain could be directed from countries other than Pakistan — where dozens of Britons with family ties have travelled for terrorist training or have been linked to recent terror plots.

Prosecutors in the London trial of several men accused of plotting to blow up at least seven trans-Atlantic commercial flights said last year that one suspect had flown into Britain from South Africa to lead the final stages of the plan.

Pakistan is a major hub for militant organizations, and a number of extremist plots targeting the West have been traced to its tribal regions that border Afghanistan.

It is also a poor country with a sluggish economy that has many nationals eager to work abroad and send money back to families at home.

Like others in the Muslim world, Pakistani passport holders have had greater difficulty getting visas to travel to Europe and the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

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