A female police officer with the Internal Investigations division was arrested and deported from the Russian Federation on 3 December 2011 for being in possession of a Namibian passport that depicted the face of some else.

Amid denials from the Ministry of Home Affairs that there were any other reported cases of Namibians with passports depicting the facial identity of someone else when scrutinised under an airport UV light, Informanté this week came across a similar case to the one reported last week involving the detention and deportation of the country’s Deputy Prosecutor General from Russia and France. The officer, now back in the country on study leave, was sent to Europe by Nampol on a police scholarship exchange programme between the Namibian and Russian police. The incident was confirmed by Inspector Jack Nangolo from Nampol’s Public Relations Division. “Yes, I can confirm that a police officer was briefly detained at Moscow airport in December after she was informed by airport authorities that she would not be allowed to enter Russia because of the status of her passport, which I understand portrayed the face of another person upon closer examination,” said Inspector Nangolo. Nangolo however chose not to reveal the name and rank of the officer in question. Only through the intervention of the Namibian embassy the female officer was eventually released and deported back to Namibia. Last week Informanté reported how Deputy Prosecutor General Antonia Verhoef was detained first in Russia and then in France, while on official business, for possessing a Namibian passport that showed the face of a black African woman when scanned under UV light, even though Verhoef is a Namibian of European descent. Home Affairs spokesperson Salome Kambala told Informanté last week that Verhoef’s case was the first and labeled the incident as strange.