Syrians Detained In Honduras Not Linked To Terrorist Attacks, Authorities Say

Honduran authorities say that four of the five Syrians detained in the Central American country with stolen Greek passports are students, and all of them say they were fleeing their country in hopes of refuge in the United States.

The woman will face charges of using a false document, a crime for which she could face up to six years in prison, and at this time she is being held on the order of the Costa Rican Attorney General’s Office. “There’s a human smuggling cell that is moving people through the region”.

Policemen escort five Syrian men after they were detained at Toncontin worldwide airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, November 18, 2015.

Honduras is a common route for migrants trying to reach the United States, but it’s unlikely the men would have been able to use the stolen passports to enter the U.S.

Meanwhile, a Syrian woman traveling on a Greek passport was detained in Costa Rica, Reuters reported Thursday, citing the foreign ministry.

The authorities said the woman had flown to Costa Rica from Peru.

They were stopped in Honduras because their passports lacked a required yellow fever vaccination certificate, Cerpas said, although Honduran officials say they spotted that the documents were irregular.

A spurt of detentions in Latin America in the past week has exposed what could be a larger trend of Syrians traveling on doctored Greek passports far from traditional trails out of their battered country to Europe.

At least seven Syrians carrying forged Greek passports have been apprehended in Honduras, Costa Rica and Paraguay in recent days.

On Thursday, Honduran authorities have identified the five men as Majd Ghanout Kousa, 21; Fady Freej Shehada, 26; William Ghanem, 19; Lourans Samaan, 19, and Mazen Mikhail, 25.

US officials said they believed the group was headed for the United States but emphasized there was no evidence they had links to militant Islamists.