Dubai Police helped the daughter of a Somali woman, who they arrested while in transit in Dubai with a fake passport on her way to the UK where she was going to seek asylum.
The girl was stuck in Dubai, when Dubai Police arrested her mother last month, as she did not have her own passport and was listed as a dependant on her mother’s fake passport.
Brigadier Saeed Hamad Bin Sulaiman, director of Rashidiya police station, said they sent the child to the Dubai Women and Children shelter, while her mother was detained at the detention centre of Al Rashidiya police station.
However, they tried to find an alternative as the girl was very attached to her mother.
Dubai Police contacted the girl’s relatives in Somalia, and coordinated with the Somali consulate to get her a passport to send her back to her grandmother in Somalia, who said she will take care of her.
Dubai Police ran DNA tests to ensure the girl was really her daughter.
The Somali girl and her mother transited in Dubai International Airport from Somalia last month, and were going to pass through Bahrain and finally to the UK.
However, an officer at Dubai airport suspected the passport was fake, as the name of the dependant on the passport was that of a boy.
Brigadier Bin Sulaiman said that the officer could tell that the child was a girl, despite the mother’s attempt to disguise her as a boy.
The mother had shaved the child’s hair and dressed her in boy’s clothing.
She confessed that the passport was not hers and that she was using it to get to the UK to seek asylum because of the unstable condition in her country.