DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – Residents of Syria’s Damascus say that Immigration and Passports Department employees forced them to pay huge sums of money to obtain passports for themselves or their family members living outside the country.
A number of people say that employees of the Immigration and Passports Department in the Marjah region and its two branches in Baramkeh and Rukn al-Din forced them to pay sums of money in exchange for approvals.
Pressure and threats
Damascus resident Ahmed al-Ahmed (a pseudonym) was subjected to great pressure when he went to the Immigration and Passports Department in the Marjeh area in the center of Damascus.
The man, in his fifties, said that the administrative officials exerted psychological pressure on and threatened him, which forced him to pay a sum of money to allow him to conduct his transaction.
Speaking to North Press, he said, “I went to obtain a passport for my cousin who lives outside the country, and it turned out that he is required for the compulsory service, which is a normal thing because that does not prevent him from obtaining passport approval.”
He added, “When I filled out the application and got the signature from the brigadier general, the person in charge of the applications refused the application and started to extort me by suggesting that my cousin opposes the Syrian government and that I sometimes receive money from him, and that this will put me in prison.”
Finally, he accepted al-Ahmed’s application and transferred it to the Damascus Immigration Branch to complete the procedure for obtaining the passport in exchange for an amount of 25,000 Syrian pounds.
Obtaining a passport for a person living outside the country requires approval from the Immigration and Passports Department in the Marjeh region, which transfers it to the immigration branches of Damascus or Rif-Dimashq, or the governorate to which the person wants the application to go.
Al-Ahmed mentioned that he had to pay the aforementioned amount at the Immigration Branch in Damascus in the Baramkeh area again so that he could he finish his papers.
The Syrian government allows relatives of people living abroad to process and get a passport on their behalf under specific conditions.
One of these conditions is that the applicant pays a fee of $300 for normal passport service (which takes ten days), or $800 for same-day or next-day processing.
Fabricated accusations
The same thing happened to Damascus resident Rama Murad (a pseudonym), when last year she went the Immigration and Passports Branch in Damascus to obtain a passport after she lost her old one.
Murad, who comes from northeast Syria, said that she went to the Criminal Security in the Mezzeh region, paid a bribe, and obtained the police report for her lost passport, which is a necessary procedure to obtain a replacement passport.
After completing the necessary papers, Murad went with her husband to the immigration branch and filled out the necessary papers until she arrived at the investigation office, where she needed a routine signature in order to complete the papers.
She told North Press that they didn’t allow her husband to go with her inside.
She added, “The officer in charge of the office took the papers from me and began fabricating accusations against me. He said that it became clear on the computer in front of him that I entered Turkey illegally, and he said that I handed over my old passport to a terrorist and made other accusations.”
During this period, her husband, who was outside the office, got to know one of the warrant officers in the branch who helped them after they paid 5,000 Syrian pounds.
Murad thought that the officer would imprison her, “but after the warrant officer went to him and put the money in the drawer of the table, the officer smiled at me and signed the papers.”
“If I had known that the reason for this intimidation was just for the sake of bribes, I would have paid him twice as much as my husband did,” she said.
Paying in dollar
Residents say that the bribes that the employees receive are not limited to Syrian currency, but some demand a hundred or two hundred dollars in exchange for granting the applicants their required approvals.
Ratib Kiki (a pseudonym), a lawyer residing in Damascus, said that he had previously been to the Immigration and Passports Department to obtain a passport for a client residing outside the country, but all his efforts to do so failed, even though he had a general power of attorney for him and judicial authorization.
He added, “I had a general authorization from the client and I obtained a judicial authorization to obtain the passport, but the officials there refused to grant me approval with unconvincing pretexts.”
Later, Kiki was able to obtain approval after he paid two hundred dollars to one of the people who accompanied him to the office and obtained the required approval.