Mot folks who have encountered the Niger documents assume they were deemed "forgeries" because everything was handwritten, even the LOGO.
Some reporters even said that the "forgeries" were "crude" because no one would ever believe the documents to be authentic which contained hand drawn letterheads!
Actually, the documents in question are not the originals ~ rather they are holographic copies ~ which is to say someone with access to the originals sat down and copied them by hand, including the logo.
The "forgery" part of the story would entail WHAT was written, not HOW it was transcribed. After all these folks, as with most folks in this world, live without photocopy machines at the ready.
Now, how do we educate our modern reporters to the realities of life in the rest of the world ~ how about this one ~ we strip them down buck naked except for a dhotti and drop them into a Lagos slum. They are to come back fully clothed, well fed, with new shoes and a great story about street crime.
Does that seem like a fair test for these guys? Bet they'd get over that nonsense about imagining Africa as being a modern electronic wonderland.
I found this amusing:
When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions. The identity of the thieves has not been established.
One question that comes to mind, which should have been explained by the journalist, is how he came to the conclusion that there was more than one thief? And from whom did this info on the theft originate?
The rest of the article seems to hang on this mere guess, a theory which is simply not justified given the available info :
But one theory is that they planned to steal headed notepaper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines.
Well, isn't that special? Here's my theory, using the KISS method:
There is a report that two bottles of perfume were stolen, along with a watch, but no evidence has been mentioned of anything else tampered with or removed from the premises. In the absence of such evidence, there isn't much reason to be baffled about the thief's intention... the most obvious explanation is just that he or she intended to steal some perfume and a watch.
The alleged robbery - and so the alleged forgery if the claim is that it is derived from paper obtained in it- occured AFTER the Iraqi met with the Nigerien official mentioned by Wilson, and also AFTER the even earlier confirmed and well-known visit to Niger of the Iraqi trade mission which invited the president of Niger to visit Baghdad.