WINDHOEK – After good detective work by the Ariamsvlei immigration department an Ethiopian was detained after he presented fake identification documents to an Ariamsvlei immigration official in the //Karas Region last week on Tuesday.
Chief Immigration Officer at Ariamsvlei border post, Aurden Titus, confirmed the incident yesterday. “Yes the Ethiopian man is in our custody and he is due to appear in a mobile court in Ariamsvlei on 24 April,” he said.
Immigration officer Godfried Mulisa who detained him said the man presented himself as an ordinary Namibian but they became suspicious after they noticed that on his passport it indicated that the man was born in Ondangwa but he could not speak Oshiwambo.
“I then asked him again in Oshiwambo but the guy could not speak a single word. I then asked him who his parents were but this time in English, that’s when he replied in English that his mum was Dechasa from Ondangwa and his father was Okarr from Ethiopia but he was born in exile,” explained Mulisa.
They asked him to provide them with his birth certificate which he did and he also presented a voter registration card.
“But we later found out from immigration that the documents were real but belonged to someone else who is in Ondangwa,” Mulisa told New Era.
“After a long interrogation the man admitted to us that he was from Ethiopia and had obtained all those documents illegally,” he said.
The man has been living in Namibia since 2001.
By Kuzeeko Tjitemisa