ST. JOHN'S, Antigua (AP):
A MAGISTRATE yesterday postponed a bail hearing for a Jamaican woman charged with fraudulently obtaining an Antiguan passport with help from US sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad.
Rona Ascott, 36, does not have legal immigration status in Antigua because her visa expired in September and she did not reapply for one, prosecutors argued.
"I don't see how I can release someone who has no time in the country," Chief Magistrate Clare Henry-Wason said in postponing the bail hearing until December 4. She also set a preliminary trial date for February 3.
Defence lawyer Monique Gordon said she would contact immigration authorities to obtain a visa extension for Ascott, who has been in Antigua for more than six years.
Prosecutors also rewrote a conspiracy charge they filed against Ascott after Gordon argued Tuesday that the charge should have been filed as two separate charges forgery and conspiracy.
Gordon also said Tuesday her client would contest the charges, and that she did not even have an Antiguan
passport.
A government-appointed task force is investigating how Muhammad, a US Army veteran, allegedly falsified documents to get an Antiguan passport and distributed Antigua passports to others while he was living in the Caribbean country in 2000-2001.
Task-force head John Fuller said Ascott applied for and was issued an Antiguan passport in September 2000 using the same birth certificate Muhammad used for his own passport application - that of Antiguan Eva Ferris, who Muhammad falsely claimed was his mother.
It was the fourth application discovered to have been made with falsified copies of Ferris' birth certificate, Fuller said Monday.
Ascott's application also included a falsified American birth certificate, he said. Gordon said her client never applied for an Antigua passport.
Muhammad and Jamaican John Lee Malvo, 17, were arrested last month and charged with murder in the sniper killings that left 10 dead and three critically wounded in Maryland and Virginia. They also are charged with fatal shootings in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia, and are suspected in a shooting in Washington state.
