Foreigner stuck for two months at Vietnam’s airport eventually leaves country
Friday, November 23, 2018, 07:34 GMT+7
A passport-less foreign passenger finally left Vietnam on Tuesday after being trapped at one of its major airports for almost two months.
The foreigner departed from the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City on a Turkish Airlines plane heading to Lagos, Nigeria, according to a dispatch Tuoi Tre News obtained from the airdrome’s police unit.
The man was denied entry to Vietnam on September 27 and has since been detained at the Ho Chi Minh City airport.
His departure on Tuesday was the result of an arrangement between Vietnamese police, immigration agency and airport authorities, and Turkish Airlines.
The flyer had a miraculous history of going through many airport passport checks with a fake passport.
On August 18, he entered Vietnam via Tan Son Nhat on a flight from Indonesia.
On September 2, he left Ho Chi Minh City boarding an AirAsia plane to Osaka, with a transit in Bangkok.
In the Japanese city his good luck ended when local authorities found him using a counterfeit passport and seized it.
On September 26, he was sent back to Vietnam on the same flight route he had taken to reach Osaka.
The following day he arrived at Tan Son Nhat airport but was not allowed to enter Vietnam as he carried no passport and valid international travel documents.
He had since used the terminal as his temporary home up until November 20. During this period, the man was placed under observation by the airport while AirAsia had to pay the cost for this monitoring as well as his meal expenses.
While the man initially insisted his name is Masena Bokang Jon, the Vietnamese immigration department pressed him into revealing his real identity as Otote Endurance, a Nigerian born in 1986, according to the same document obtained by Tuoi Tre News.
Endurance, who also claimed to have stomach cancer, used a Lesotho passport to enter South Africa, Nigeria, eSwatini, Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Vietnam.
A Lesotho diplomat based in Malaysia said last month the passport he had owned actually belongs to a female citizen of the South African territory.
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