14 DAY TRIAL // A 9-year-old girl from Cwmbran, South Wales put smugglers and other crooks to shame when she made it through Turkish customs by showing officials a fake passport identifying her as an unicorn.
Her parents explain that the passport did not actually belong to Emily Harris, but to her favorite toy, a unicorn named Lily, whom they did not even bring along for the trip.
The passport has gold teddy bears on the front and does not look anything like an official document. Custom officials stamped it nonetheless, The Sun reports.
The 9-year-old girl's parents told the press that they were leaving Antalya when the mix-up happened.
Neither they nor Emily realized in time that what they were handing the custom officials was the fake passport they had made for the girl's toy unicorn.
“I didn’t realise until I was putting the passports away. There was a moment of panic when I thought someone would come chasing after us, but nothing.”
“The passport doesn’t even look real – it’s got gold teddy bears on the front and was a completely different size from mine and my husband, Allen’s. The man even asked Emily how old she was, and she told him nine, before he stamped it,” mother Nicky recollects.
It could be that the custom officials thought that the girl was playing a game and wanted to humor her, but Emily's parents are quite convinced that they did not even notice that the passport they had been handed had the picture of a toy unicorn where Emily's photo should have been.
They say that, though they did laugh at the entire affair, they could not help but question the custom officials' commitment to their job.
As Nicky put it, “We saw the funny side, and laughed at the fact that the officer had even stamped the passport.”
“But at the same time, it’s a worry to any parent, how easy it would be to smuggle a child through customs and into another country.”