Interpol hits back at Zahid's reasoning of its passport database being slow

KUALA LUMPUR: Interpol has come out to defend its database for checking passport which, Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had deemed as being 'too time consuming' and 'causing airport delays'.

According to a report in AFP, Interpol which had earlier hit out at the Malaysian Immigration Department for not checking the ill-fated MH370 plane passengers' passports against its database, defended it after Zahid said its database of 40.2 million lost passports was "too large" and would overwhelm Malaysia's database management system.

"If there is any responsibility or blame for this failure, it rests solely with Malaysia's Immigration Department," Interpol was quoted as saying.

Interpol said that it takes "just seconds to reveal whether a passport is listed, with recent tests providing results in 0.2 seconds".

“While some countries consult the database more than a hundred million times a year, in 2014 prior to the tragic disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, Malaysia's Immigration Department did not conduct a single check of passengers' passports against Interpol's databases.

"Had Malaysia consulted Interpol's database, the fact that both passengers were using stolen passports would have been discovered almost instantaneously," it said.

Following the disappearance of flight MH370 on March 8, the Malaysian authorities had revealed that two Iranians were travelling on stolen passports.

On Wednesday, Zahid told Parliament that consulting the database was too time consuming for immigration officers and caused airport delays.

An online portal reported that Zahid maintained Malaysia’s immigration department had matched “world standards” when carrying out border control.

He reportedly said immigration officers guarding Malaysia's entry points were trained by other countries including the US, UK, Australia and Canada to carry out profiling and detect false travel documents.

He added that any suspicions would prompt a second check through a Document Examination Centre (DEC), with a special lab at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) used by the immigration authorities to check dubious documents since 2007.

Astro Awani