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PARIS (AP) — Interpol says it's troubling that despite repeated warnings about passport fraud, people have managed to board flights a billion times without having their passports checked against the police agency's stolen-documents records.
The France-based agency says that happened again when two people boarded the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight with passports that were listed as stolen in Interpol's database.
Information about the thefts of an Austrian passport in 2012 and an Italian passport last year was entered into Interpol's database after they were stolen in Thailand. But Interpol says no checks of the stolen passports were made "by any country" before the flight.
Interpol says it's working to determine the true identities of the two passengers.
In a statement, Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble says it's too soon to speculate about any connection between the stolen passports and the missing plane. But he says "it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol's databases."
Noble says he hopes that governments and airlines worldwide will begin to screen all passengers' passports before allowing them to board flights.
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