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The 2004 Israel–New Zealand passport scandal was an incident of passport fraud in July 2004 that led New Zealand to take diplomatic sanctions against Israel. High-level contacts between the two countries were suspended after two Israeli citizens suspected of being Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara, were caught trying to fraudulently acquire a New Zealand passport using the identity of a man with cerebral palsy. Prime Minister Helen Clark declared that New Zealand government viewed the acts carried out by Kelman and Cara as "not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law." ==History== Howard Way, a Lynfield general practitioner testified that a man, asked him to witness his passport application because he was going to Australia to get married. Way said the man was "calm and gave me no reason not to believe him. I filled out the form." A fake post office box and voicemail phone service were set up in the name of a man suffering from cerebral palsy, whose birth certificate was used in the passport application. New Zealand Internal Affairs official Ian Tingey detected the irregularity and called the applicant, who had a Canadian or American accent. "When I quizzed him on his accent his explanation to me was he had not travelled or held a New Zealand passport before but had spent a lot of time in New Zealand with Canadian friends and family." Tingey contacted the father of the disabled man and realized the application was a fraud. The police bugged Kelman and Cara's phones, set up a sting operation, and caught Kelman and Cara in March 2004. The case was presided over by Judge Chris Field. Cara was represented by Grant Illingworth and Kelman was represented by Nigel Faigan. Illingworth and Faigan unsuccessfully tried to get the case dismissed early on by saying that pre-trial publicity was "highly prejudicial." Kelman and Cara denied membership in Mossad but plead guilty to trying to enter the country illegally and working with organized criminal gangs. They were sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to pay US $32,500 to a cerebral palsy charity.〔(New Zealand jails Israeli 'spies' )〕 After serving either two or three months they were deported. Cara, who visited New Zealand 24 times between October 2000 and March 2004, claims he was working as a travel agent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「2004 Israel–New Zealand passport scandal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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