Jailed for using invalid passport

A 40-year-old man of Tunisian origin was yesterday jailed for three months for failing to produce a valid passport when he returned to Malta after having left illegally a year before.

Tahar Trabelsi was found guilty of failing to produce the passport at the airport on arrival in Malta from Tunisia on September 6, 2001.

Magistrate Joseph Cassar heard how Trabelsi became a Maltese citizen on March 4, 1994. He had applied for a Maltese passport on March 15 that same year and it was given to him.

On May 23, 1997, he called at the passport office and asked for his passport to be changed saying he was "slightly defaced" in the photograph. The old passport was cancelled and returned to him and a new one was issued.

But Magistrate Cassar also heard that when Trabelsi left Malta by sea on September 13, 2000, he did not take the new passport with him. Besides, he was not meant to leave Malta in the first place because he was undergoing criminal proceedings.

When Trabelsi returned to Malta from Tunisia on September 6, 2001, he presented the cancelled passport to the immigration officers at the airport and was arrested.

Police Inspector Abraham Zammit prosecuted.