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Sniper suspect has Antiguan passport
May have used stolen documents in application
COLIN JAMES, Observer correspondent
Saturday, October 26, 2002

THERE was speculation yesterday whether stolen or fraudulent birth certificates, including one belonging to an Antiguan woman, may have been used by US sniper suspect, John Allen Muhammad, to obtain an Antiguan passport, officials in the eastern Caribbean island said yesterday.

Muhammad, believed to have been behind the killing of 10 persons in the Washington area, was christened John Allen Williams, the name in which he was issued an Antigua & Barbuda passport -- number 0118115 -- on July 4, 2000. The passport was to expire in 2010.

Williams had changed his surname to Muhammad after converting to Islam years before applying for the Antiguan passport.

Muhammad, had in support of his application for an Antiguan passport, presented the authorities in St John's, the Antiguan capital, with a birth certificate, ostensibly of his mother, showing that she was an Antiguan, Eva Ferris, born in St John's on November 12, 1929.

However, the family of an Antiguan woman named Eva Ferris, who lives in Connecticut in the USA, insisted that she has no son. They suggested that her birth certificate -- whose information seemed to match precisely that of Muhammad's mother -- may have been stolen from a daughter who teaches at the Greenville Primary School in Rose Street, Ottos, where Muhammad's three children went to school between mid-2001 and 2002. He had spirited them out of the United States after the break-up of his second marriage.

No other Eva Ferris could be traced in Antigua yesterday, except one who the authorities said was dead.

Muhammad's (Williams') own birth certificate, showed that the was born is New Orleans, on December 31, 1960, and that his mother was Eva Feris, who was born in Antigua. However, on the Williams birth certificate, Feris is spelt with a single "r".

Ironically, although Muhammad applied for an Antiguan passport in 2000, the island's chief immigration officer, Col Clyde Walker said records they discovered show that he arrived in Antigua on May 20, 2001 and stayed at Pineapple Beach Hotel for one month.

"For this year I've not recovered any documentation on him ... but we are still looking for that," Walker said.

The Antiguan authorities have sent copies of the birth certificate to the United States Embassy in Barbados for forwarding to US investigators probing the sniper killings.

Yesterday Ena Thomas, head of the Antiguan foreign ministry division that issues passports, said that the birth certificate for Eva Ferris presented by Muhammad was a genuine document in that it would have come out of the official records.

"This is valid certificate," she said. "It has the seal of the Registrar General and it was extracted on June 6, 2000."

However, there was the possibility of the document being fraudulently issued, she suggested.

"We would also ask the police to investigate," Thomas said. "There have been recent isolated cases of people using fraudulent documents."

The Ferrises have retained the services of Antigua lawyer, Harold Lovell, who called for a full inquiry by the Antiguan authorities.

"I feel that there is need for the local passport authorities to engage in a serious investigation to determine how this individual could acquire a false passport under false pretence and to determine how this could be prevented in the future," Lovell said.