The red flag should have gone up at the immigration checkpoint, when the departure immigration officer scanned the barcode on the passport. Could be that the immigration officer was greased, or part of the caper. The officers who let them pass have been detained.
A question for any EU passport holders: does the EU not issue the biometric passports yet? Our Indonesian passports have fingerprints and iris scans electronically embedded in them, and the photo of the holder cannot be changed. It is not likely that anybody from the neighbourhood would use these documents with Italian and German names. Perhaps the users of these passports were middle eastern creeps who could pass for Europeans.
Is it conceivable that the security database could be hacked, and the flags removed?
“Is it conceivable that the security database could be hacked, and the flags removed?”
That’s interesting...maybe so.
If so, yea, could have been an inside job.........