One important point ... The CIA report specifically states Zegrus attempted to enter Japan in 1959. This is the key piece of evidence illustrating how subsequent writers screwed up the year as well as the fictitious nation's name.
My guess is that this story passed through multiple publications (e.g., Frank Edwards style "Stranger Than ..." books) and the original details became distorted a la Chinese Whispers.
The latter-day (1981 onward) original source for the version of the story we thought we knew seems to be Paul Begg.
My best guess is that the 1981 version is a slightly corrupted(intentionally, accidentally, or both), one-sentence compressed version of the original. IE the guy writing the book left out the details because he wanted the incident to sound mysterious and he knew the incident wasn't actually a mystery.
But all later ones are expansions of that one-liner, that make up everything not covered in that one sentence. Which is where all the weirdness comes from. There's a real story, but what gets passed around is actually a work of fiction.
Here's something else that lends weight to the notion our Mr. Zegrus came from Africa rather than Iberia. There's one element of the allegedly gibberish-ridden passport that isn't gibberish.
Tamanrasset is the largest province in Algeria - situated in the extreme south / southeast of the country. It is named for its provincial capital - Tamanrasset
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset_Province
Regarding the city of Tamanrasset ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset
Whoa... that adds an interesting clarity to the story. It's a fictional country, named after a real place. Maybe that's how he'd been able to use the fake passport? People attempting to look up the issuing authority saw that the name wasn't bogus. The indecipherable text was kinda.. not their problem. They didn't expect to be able to read foreign stuff and didn't try too hard.
Hmm this fits the tone of that Parliament piece. It's like "hey did you hear this story about some guy who flew around the world on a fake passport?" The incredulity is directed at the customs agents, not the name on the passport.
Wait a second... Tuareg is the name of a group of Berber dialects. Is that 'nonsensical' writing actually something in Berber?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_languages
So far my efforts at trying to translate the Berber dialect of Tamahaq haven't worked. Best I've been able to do is find a music video in one of the other Berber dialects.
http://endangeredlanguages.com/lang/290/samples/8948
Listening to it um.... it is utterly alien.
Interesting, running the text "Rch ubwall ochtra negussi habesi trwap turapa." through Bing translator produced a result. Bing does not have a translator for Berber languages of any kind, but it DOES have Kiswahili. Which spits out: "RCH Ubwall The Ochtra is not Trwap Turapa." Interesting.... This is not gibberish. It's the wrong language, thus the translation is incomplete. Kiswahili is a language that is spoken in areas of Africa. I don't really know how similar it is though.
Wait... this form of written Berber uses a modified Latin alphabet, part of the translation difficulty might be that the words are all misspelled. The modified alphabet adds accent marks to some letters. The text on the passport is transcribed as having o and p in the text. Interestingly that seems to be what makes the Tuareg variant of Berber different than the others... it DOES use both O and P.
Well that was fun. I learned a few things about Berber languages.
Further, because I decided to see if other online translators might have more options...
using Google translator set to "Amharic"(Ethiopian): Rch ubwall ochtra shows a pattern of trwap tones.
Cebuano and Filipino(Phillipines), Hawaiian, Javanese, Malagasy, Maori, Samoan: Rch ubwall ochtra negotiates the size of the gravel truck.
Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba(Nigerian), Somali: Rch ubwall ochtra is a great way to practice twap.
Tamil(south India and Sri Lanka): Dismiss Nebuzzi Hafezi's Quote by Rich Upa.
Interesting... The Tamil translation seems like nonsense, the Ethiopian and Nigerian translations are incomplete, and the Micronesian translations make no sense. Maybe this is the linguistic equivalent of staring at clouds and trying to see shapes. But it's interesting that some of the hits are from languages spoken in areas near Algeria.
Why bother? I'm suddenly curious if the text sample might be something stupid like "this passport is a fake." but written out in Tuareg.