Massive Forgery of Identity Cards Uncovered ahead of Elections

Massive Forgery of Identity Cards Uncovered ahead of Elections

Between 4,000 and 10,000 forged identity cards in the Zahle, Baabda, Western Bekaa and south Lebanon districts remain prime concern for judicial police only three days ahead of decisive parliamentary elections.

Media reports said Interior Minister Ziad Baroud was sparing no effort to find a mechanism to combat fraud.

Pan-Arab daily Asharq al Awsat on Thursday said the forged IDs were now in the hands of security authorities which already undertook measures to arrest the perpetrators.

It said security forces were able to find a printer used in the forgery.

Well-informed sources told An Nahar daily, however, that the government has the potential to hand out devices to detect fraud at all polling stations.

Pan-Arab Al Hayat newspaper, for its part, spoke of two kinds of forgery — Counterfeit IDs which can be detected by sophisticated technical equipment and "legitimate" IDs which carry the name of a person other than the bearer”s name or his/her photo.

The second type of forgery means that they carry the names of people overseas who have not obtained Lebanese identity cards or those working outside the country and are not expected to participate in the election so IDs would be given to people to vote.

This is usually done by agreement between the mayor and the party that wishes to gain votes of illegal voters in its favor.

A well-informed source told al Liwaa daily, meanwhile, that about 3,700 forged identity cards had been found in the possession of a very prominent political party ready to be used in voting.

He said the fingerprint of each citizen is in itself a guarantee that fraud will not take place.

The report on evidence of fake identity cards was uncovered by Prime Minister Fouad Saniora during an ordinary cabinet session on Tuesday.

Baroud said the ministry had "put its hand on the issue."

"We have taken strict measures and we will take even stringiest measures to bring the situation under control," Baroud was quoted as telling Cabinet ministers.