Antigua opposition leader stages hunger strike
ST JOHN’S, Antigua (AP) — An opposition leader staged a one-day hunger strike here yesterday to demand an independent commission be appointed to investigate passport fraud in Antigua and Barbuda.
The Caribbean country’s government appointed a task force to investigate US sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad, 41, for allegedly obtaining Antiguan passports by falsifying birth certificates and supplying passports to people trying to get into the United States.
Opposition Leader Baldwin Spencer said the four-member task force isn’t digging deep enough to consider whether government officials played any part in the passport fraud.
“As the days go by, a lot of things are being revealed” which suggest the investigation should have a wider focus, Spencer said, sitting with six other members of his United Progressive Party at a bus stop in St John’s, the nation’s capital.
The task force has said Muhammad falsified documents and distributed Antiguan passports in 2000-2001 when he was living on the island.
Spencer accused the government of choosing four members of the task force that would favour the government in their reports.
He noted that the head of the task force, John Fuller, is a lawyer representing Prime Minister Lester Bird in a libel lawsuit against opposition politician and an Antiguan media company over rape allegations made by a teenage girl.
Bird has denied ever knowing the girl, who made the allegations in a widely circulated videotape.
Among the other task force members, Ralph Francis recently left the opposition party and began working for the government as a lawyer, and Cosmos Marcelle is a retired police detective.
Bird has denied hand-picking the members, saying the task force is free to investigate the government and would act according to its judgment.
The government did not publicly respond to Spencer’s announcement of his day-long hunger strike. The opposition also protested over the issue for two days earlier this month.
Muhammad was arrested last month along with Jamaican Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, and charged in the US sniper killings that terrorised Maryland and Virginia.
Ten people were killed and three critically wounded. They also are suspected in five other shootings, in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana, and two shootings in Tacoma, Washington.
Muhammad and Malvo, who both are in federal custody, lived in Antigua between 2000 and 2001