ST JOHN’S, Antigua (AP) — Investigators in Antigua say a Jamaican in custody in Connecticut showed US sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad how to falsify certificates to illegally obtain Antiguan passports.

The head of an Antiguan task force said Monday that Muhammad had obtained a passport for Jamaican Norman Miggil Manroe, who was arrested in Hartford last week and faces federal charges of using false documents to obtain a US passport in Connecticut.

“There is no question in my mind that … John Allen Muhammad clearly prepared the documents for Manroe’s second fraudulently obtained Antiguan passport,” task force leader John Fuller told a news conference.

The task force is investigating Muhammad, a 41 year-old US citizen, for obtaining Antiguan passports by falsifying birth certificates and supplying the passports to people trying to get into the United States.

Fuller said the two met in Antigua in 2000, when Manroe served seven months’ jail for importing drugs into Antigua. He said Manroe showed Muhammad how to falsify certificates after he was released. Muhammad obtained an Antiguan passport in July 2000 with a birth certificate claiming his mother was born on the Caribbean island.

Meanwhile, Fuller said another man detained last week in the Bronx, New York, on suspicion of obtaining an Antiguan passport with false documents is a citizen of Antigua with no connection to the sniper suspect.

“John Ferris has been wrongly accused and charged,” Fuller said. “We are doing everything in our power … to bring it home to the US authorities that they have made a mistake.”

Ferris was charged in the United States with illegally obtaining an Antiguan passport and is out on bail.

Muhammad was arrested last month along with Jamaican Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, and charged with murder in the sniper killings that terrorised Maryland and Virginia. Ten people were killed and three critically wounded. They also are charged with fatal shootings in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia and are suspected in a shooting in Washington state.

Muhammad and Malvo, who both are in federal custody, lived in Antigua between 2000 and 2001.

Manroe was wanted for questioning by US investigators tracking the movements of Muhammad and Malvo.

Agents from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service; the FBI and the US Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms arrested him Friday while he was detained at the Hartford Community Correctional Centre. He was there awaiting deportation to Jamaica after having served about one year in prison for his conviction in Massachusetts on a charge of possession with the intent to sell narcotics.

When arrested, Manroe was carrying a Connecticut driver’s licence bearing the name Edward Williams and a Hartford address. He is suspected of using at least three other names.

Manroe was moved by federal authorities Monday from the Bridgeport Community Correctional Centre to the Wyatt Detention Centre in Rhode Island.

Fuller said that when Manroe was released from jail in Antigua he should have been deported back to Jamaica, but evaded that by using the passport supplied by Muhammad. He said Antiguan police failed to note reports by immigration officials identifying John Edwards as Manroe.