3000 Blank British Passports Stolen
July 30, 2008 
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Around 3,000 blank British passports due to be sent to embassies around the world have been stolen from a van that was hijacked near Manchester, England, in what the government admits was a major security breach.
The Foreign Office admitted that 24 parcels containing blank passports and vignettes - the stickers used for visa stamps - were taken from a vehicle that was traveling from the printers yesterday.
Security experts have suggested that the cargo, which has a street value of almost $10 million was probably targeted deliberately.
The van was hijacked when one of two delivery men got out of the vehicle to buy chocolate and a newspaper. While he was gone, a colleague in the vehicle was threatened and assaulted before the van was driven, with the second delivery man still inside, to a quiet street nearby.
The packages of secure documents were then taken from the van.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman admitted it was a serious breach of security and that the Home Office and Identity and Passport Service had taken “preventative action” to guard against the stolen passports being forged and used to commit fraud.
Recently, Western intelligence agencies alerted the public to the fact that al-Qaeda was recruiting EU passport holders as operatives for upcoming US operations.
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