A man who came to Japan on a fake passport didn’t mysteriously disappear – Full Fact

AN Facebook The publication claims that experts believe that a man who traveled to Japan using a fake passport was from a parallel universe.

This is not true. While there are records of a man who tried to enter Japan with a passport from a non-existent country, he did not “disappear” from a safe room, as the publication claims. There’s no reason to think that he came from a parallel universe, and we can’t find any experts who would say that he did.

The “taured man” story has also been previously debunked by the US fact-checker. snoops.

Where does this story come from?

The Facebook post, which was shared by an account called “Alien UFO Sightings”, claims that in 1954 a man arrived at the Tokyo airport with a passport from a country called “Taured”, which does not exist.

This story appears to be based on a true case involving a man named John Allen K. Zegrus, who was arrested after entering Japan on a false passport.

The case in question was mentioned in the House of Commons as part of a debate on border control measures in 1960. During the debate, MP Robert Mathew claimed that Mr. Zegrus was facing prosecution in Japan after attempting to enter the country using a passport in an “unknown language”, which “was claimed to have been issued in Tamanrosset, the capital of the Tuarid Independent Sovereign State”.

Although neither Tamanrosset nor Tuarid are real places, Mr. Zegrus had successfully used his passport to travel the world “without hindrance”, before eventually being arrested by Japanese authorities, according to Mr. Mathew.

Two weeks after Mr. Mathew mentioned Mr. Zegrus, an article in a Canadian newspaper The province he also reported on the story in more detail, writing: “John claimed to be a ‘naturalized Ethiopian and an intelligence agent for Colonel Nasser.’ The passport was stamped as issued in Tamanrasset, the Tuared capital ‘south of the Sahara’. Any place with such a romantic name should exist, but it doesn’t. John Allen Kuchar Zegrus invented them.”

What happened to Mr. Zegrus?

While it would appear that the Facebook post is loosely based on the actual case of Mr Zegrus and his fake passport, we are unable to find evidence for his claim that the man “disappeared” from a “high security room”. [sic]”. Although it seems that he was sentenced to a year in prison.

As mentioned in the House of Commons debate, Mr. Zegrus was prosecuted in Japan after his arrest, and the details of the outcome of the trial were mentioned in a Japanese translation. radio transmission provided by the United States Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service.

The radio broadcast, which aired in December 1961, read:

“The Tokyo District Court sentenced John Allen K. Zegrus, a man without nationality, to one year in prison on December 22 for illegally entering Japan and passing fake checks. Zegrus, a self-proclaimed American who allegedly acted as an agent for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency, entered this country in 1959 on a false passport.”

According to these reports, although the details are quite sketchy, it appears that a man traveled to Japan on a fake passport from the non-existent country of ‘Taured’ sometime in the 1950s. But instead of disappearing, he was successfully arrested and sentenced. to prison.

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