American sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad had plotted to kidnap Antiguan prime minister Lester Bird for money, a witness told a government-appointed task force probing passport fraud in this Eastern Caribbean island last week.

“The witness was still in a state of considerable anxiety a year and 10 months after the suggestion was made,” the task force chairman, John Fuller, said yesterday.

Attorney-General Gretel Thom confirmed that Fuller’s team made mention of the threat in an interim report submitted on Thursday and released yesterday.

“It was also … that the police have executed search warrants as part of the investigation into the activities of (Muhammad) and have confiscated two computers they believed he used while in Antigua,” a statement from the A-G’s office said.

Fuller, who said they will investigate the threat, explained that “the attorney-general choose to let the prime minister make the disclosure” after he was asked why no mention was made of the threat in the report released by Thom.

Bird, in a statement yesterday, said he was deeply troubled that the task force reported that other documents it had obtained gave rise to concern regarding Muhammad’s activities while he was in Antigua.

“As head of national security, I have been informed that my own safety may have been at risk. These matters, I understand, will be addressed in the task force’s final report,” Bird said.

The task force, set up last week after it emerged that Muhammad used false documents to obtain an Antiguan passport when he lived in that country in 2000, found there was negligence at the passport office in relation to the alleged sniper’s application.

“There is no evidence of any criminal collusion with anyone in the passport office,” the four-member task force wrote in their interim report. “However, we have to conclude that there was negligence in the issuing of the passport. Three persons in the office perused his application and supporting documents . (and) various discrepancies . should have been observed.”

Muhammad, 41, accused of killing of 10 persons in the Washington DC area of the USA over a three-week period, 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 the passport, presented the authorities in St John’s, the Antigua 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.

But the family of an Antiguan woman named Eva Ferris, who lives in Connecticut in the US, insisted that she has no son. They suggested that her birth certificate – whose information seemed to match that of Muhammad’s mother – may have been stolen from a daughter who teaches at Greensville Primary School in Rose Street, Ottos, where Muhammad’s three children went to school between mid-2001 and 2002.

Muhammad’s own birth certificate, showed that he was born in 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”.

The investigators, who comprised two lawyers, a priest and a former detective, said the passport officials should have noticed that Muhammad’s Louisiana birth certificate “plainly shows that the informant of the birth of John Williams was the “parent” whose signature it shows as “Mrs Myrtie Williams” and not Eva Feris”.

They added: “This alone is a blatant contradiction on the face of the document and should have been seen. Additionally, the mother’s age at the time of Williams’ birth is stated as 39 on the 31st December, 1960 resulting in the mother being born in 1921.

“The accompanying birth certificate of Eva Ferris shows her year of birth in Antigua as 1929. This also should have been a red flag to the staff at the passport office.”

The task force also said that the passport officials should have noticed that the spelling of Ferris differs on both documents, and that the typeface used for “Eva Feris” and “Antigua, St John’s” on Williams’ birth certificate are different to those used in the other words on the document. The words, they added, are also “off angle” to the other lines typed on the certificate.

“It seems clear to us that had Williams’ documentation been examined carefully, his application would have been rejected and his documents may have been referred to the police and become the subject of criminal prosecution for forgery,” the task force said, adding, however, that “these charges are still possible”.

The task force also found that Janet Harris, the principal of the privately-run Greensville Primary School, lied when she stated she knew Muhammad for 18 months when she certified his application.

“She admitted . that this was untrue and that she had known the Williamses for four months only, but that she wanted to help them as Williams had told her his mother was Antiguan,” the investigators said.

Harris had also told the task force that she was swayed to help Muhammad because he helped her school and “seemed very honest”.

The task force recommended that the passport office uses only trained staff to examine applications and supporting documents to detect forgeries.

“We need to review the administrative procedure in the passport office to ensure that persons are not able to present fraudulent documents and they go undetected,” said Thom .

She said they were still investigating the likelihood that other passports may have been issued with Muhammad’s involvement, based on allegations that he ran a passport racket in which he helped other persons, mostly Jamaicans, to travel to the US illegally.

“They have only dealt with one specific application, but they did indicate that they are looking at others,” the attorney-general said. “They believe there has been some association between John Allen Williams and those applications. But that has to be verified. We are looking at a one-year period, so we are looking at over 5,000 applications.”

The attorney-general also said that investigations being carried out by two FBI agents is on-going and the task force found no evidence to link Muhammad to Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber who was overpowered by passengers on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami last December when he attempted to detonate a bomb in his sneaker.

The FBI agents flew to St John’s last week to check for a possible link between Muhammad and Reid whose final destination was Antigua.

When asked if the agents were still on the island, Thom said, “I don’t know at this time. I know from time-to-time they will be travelling in and out of the Island.”

Thom also confirmed that Lee Boyd Malvo, the 17 year-old Jamaican boy arrested with Muhammad in connection with the sniper shootings, and Malvo’s mother, Una James, arrived in Antigua separately in 1999 but there was no record of when they left.

“We have an entry for Una James on 15 January, 1999 and for Lee Boyd Malvo on 9 July, 1999,” Thom said.

Asked how they were permitted to stay in Antigua, Thom said: “They did not obtain citizenship to the best of our knowledge. What they would have done, they would have made an application to the Immigration Department to extend their stay in Antigua and Barbuda. I’ve seen one record where they had requested an extension. There is a letter from the Seventh-day Adventist school where Lee Boyd Malvo was a student . and an extension was granted allowing him to continue his schooling there. That was in 1999.

“I don’t know if they stayed here illegally because I don’t know when they left. I know for a period of time they were here legally. I don’t have the information when they left Antigua and Barbuda. That is still being investigated. There are a number of immigration records to go through.”

Yesterday, Bird said the United Sates government had offered to train Antigua’s immigration officials in the detection of forgeries and false documentation, and his administration would take up the offer “at once”.

“However, the evidence of negligence in relation to the issuance of the passport to John Allen Williams requires an immediate change in the system and personnel associated with it, and this will be done immediately,” Bird said.