Immigration police announced yesterday they arrested 13 Mongolian men who were trying to fly from the city to Europe using fake visas on Sunday.

It was the largest number of foreigners arrested for trying to use fake visas at Pudong International Airport since it went into operation in 1999, according to the Pudong Frontier Inspection Station.

Police will deport the men back to Mongolia, the inspection station's spokesman Fan Hongxiang said.

Fan said the men were lured to the boarding area after routine checks and arrested as a group.

A suspicious immigration officer surnamed Hu reported to headquarters when he was examining the passport of a foreign tourist during a boarding check.

The man was acting overly anxious and impatient to get through the check even though his flight wasn't scheduled to leave for more than two hours.

Hu also noticed signs of modifications on the visa page of his passport.

Meanwhile, a patrol police officer also noticed a bunch of dubious-looking travelers in the airport. Suspecting they could be trying to sneak into a foreign country as a group, the police didn't arrest them immediately.

The men allegedly confessed that they modified their passports after landing in a city in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region early last week.

(Shanghai Daily July 26, 2005)