For the second time in as many weeks, a lawyer representing a Libyan businessman caught with a total of nine passports criticised the fact that the authorities require physical passports to issue visas for people to travel to Malta.
Arthur Azzopardi said his client, a Libyan businessman residing in San Gwann, was simply delivering nine passports and corresponding applications for a visa to enter Malta.
Mohamed Ramdan Mostfa Mousa, 33, was charged under arrest before magistrate Gabriella Vella this afternoon, after airport customs officers found the passports in his luggage as he arrived on a flight from Mitiga in Libya.
Inspector Frankie Sammut from the Immigration police told the court that Mr Mousa was a director of a Libyan hospital and represented the Ben Mousa Hospital Group in Malta.
The man told investigators that the passports had been handed to him right before his departure by an airport employee who had asked him to deliver the visa applications and the passports. He had never met the people whose passports he was carrying, the court heard.
The inspector said the law prohibited the transferring of passports other than the person in whose name the passport was issued.
But Dr Azzopardi told the court that the present system whereby physical passports were required for the issuance of visas “did not make sense”.
He said Libyans effectively had no other option but to send their passports and visa applications with other people travelling to Malta as the Central Visa Unit was insisting on the original, physical passports along with the visa application.
To make matters worse, it only accepted passports brought to the airport by the person hosting the visitor and would not accept passports delivered by courier such as DHL.
The case was put off to Wednesday when the court is expected to hear a representative of the Central Visa Unit testify on this requirement.
In the meantime, Mr Mousa was granted bail against a deposit of €300 and a €1,000 personal guarantee.
Last week, Dr Azzopardi, this time representing two Syrian men caught with 10 passports, saying this was an “administrative blunder”.
Lawyer Shazoo Ghaznavi also represented Mr Mousa.