HOW MANY CHANCES TO ARREST JOHN MUHAMMAD WERE PASSED UP?

One month after Muhammad arrived on Antigua with Gianquinto, he flew into Miami International Airport. He entered the country on April 14, 2001, with two Jamaican women and a young girl. Muhammad presented a false birth certificate, and the women and the child also presented false documents, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service interrogated Muhammad, unsure whether he was a U.S. citizen. The INS contacted the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, but prosecutors there declined to charge Muhammad, the sources said. A conviction for presenting false identification documents carries a 15-year prison sentence.

Jeez, this guy is like the old joke: he couldn’t get arrested! No wonder he was so confident in his actually rather limited criminal skills.

Here’s more on the Antigua connection. And note that the April 23, 2001 date on this document doesn’t match the story Muhammad apparently told the feds on April 14 about having just changed his name: “One source close to the case said Muhammad told INS agents that he had changed his last name after converting to Islam and that he received the phony certificate to match his driver’s license, which listed his last name as Muhammad.” Kind of embarrassing that they fell for that.