A Singaporean and two Chinese on Wednesday were sentenced to more than five months in prison by a Hong Kong court that convicted them of possessing false travel documents.

The three were deported to Hong Kong from Vietnam on Nov. 3, for holding fake Malaysian passports.

They were tried and put into jail in Hong Kong for the flight they took to Vietnam was an aircraft controlled by Hong Kong, said a statement issued by the local immigration authority.

The Singaporean male named Ng Ngak Hoo was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, while two Chinese women, Yang Cailing and Qiu Jiehe, were given five months' imprisonment each.

The Singaporean man said he paid a middle man 12,000 US dollars to get a travel document to Morocco and was given a false Malaysian passport on the flight from Hong Kong to Vietnam as arranged.

The two women from China's mainland also said they were given faked Malaysian passports on the same flight after asking a middleman to arrange travel documents for France at a cost of 20,000 US dollars.

(Xinhua News Agency November 24, 2005)