The South African passport found on the body of Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, suspected to have been an al-Qaeda operative, is a fake, department of home affairs director general Mkuseli Apleni said on Wednesday.
He said the fake passport was based on a previous passport design.
The passport was found on Muhammad, who was killed at the weekend in Mogadishu, Somalia.
“Our investigations have revealed without equivocation that the passport was not an authentic South African passport, but a fake.”
Africa’s most wanted man
He said that the passport had not been issued by any South African authority and there was no record of the passport being used to enter or leave South Africa.
According to a report quoting a Somali source close to the investigation, Muhammad was in possession of a SA passport in the name of Daniel Robinson. It gave his year of birth as 1971.
Muhammad, wanted for blowing up the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, died in a shoot-out in the Somali capital on Tuesday night last week, it was reported at the weekend.
The 38-year-old is thought to have planned the massive truck bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224 people in 1998 and had a $5-million bounty on his head, making him Africa’s most wanted man. – Sapa