Sucaad Xaaji Max'uud

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

One more reason why Toronto Star is my favourite paper in this city.

 

Passing the lips test

 

A stiff upper lip is often needed when dealing with Canadian officials. But when Suaad Hagi Mohamud, a 31-year-old Toronto mother, was apparently blocked from returning to Canada from Kenya because an official didn't believe her lips matched those in her passport photo, she needed more than ordinary fortitude.

 

After two months of fear and privation in Nairobi, Mohamud finally got an agreement, via her lawyer, that Ottawa would do DNA testing to allow a definitive identification. Ottawa will also ask Kenya to postpone criminal proceedings against her on identity fraud charges until the vital evidence is presented.

 

But the test results will take up to two weeks to confirm. Meanwhile, the now-broke Mohamud is living in a rundown Nairobi hotel room where she is holed up, in fear of street criminals and police who might detain her because she is not carrying the passport that Canadian officials summarily cancelled.

 

Given that there are filed affidavits testifying to Mohamud's identity and that Mohamud herself pleaded for a DNA test, it is almost certain that she is who she says she is and that the officials bungled in denying her entry to Canada. Accordingly, the Canadian government should pay her expenses in Nairobi while she awaits the DNA test results.

 

Koronto Istaar

 

Mohamed Abscir (Abshir), 12, sits outside Tim Horton's at Lawrence Square Mall in North York, a place he and his mother used to frequent. His mother, Suaad Hagi Mohamud, has been marooned in Nairobi for two months.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Originally posted by chocolate & honey:

The last two pictures match. It is her, only ehem..lighter, how you say more refined?

Some people do suffer from inferiortiy complex wallee thinking that if they side with the west a 100%, then some 'intelligence' might rub off on them. Yaa allah!

I don't think inay iscaddeysay the sister. Sawirkaas u egtahay inay madoowdahay sawir ahaantiisa on that particular picture in uu yahay laga yaabaa, oo indoor laga qaaday, neither natural light or artificial light from the camera jirin. Qof iscaddeeye uma eko koley aniga saa u arko.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

'Canadian refugee' a Nairobi celebrity

 

Strangers in street offer support to woman detained for not looking like her passport photo

 

Meet Suaad Hagi Mohamud, the "Canadian refugee."

 

At her dingy Nairobi hotel, in the malls and on the streets of the Kenyan capital, that's how the 31-year-old Toronto woman has come to be known in the past few weeks.

 

"It sounds strange but the local newspapers have written about me and so people recognize me when I go outside," said Mohamud, who has been stranded in Nairobi for more than two months.

 

In that time, she has become a celebrity of sorts because two Nairobi newspapers, the Daily Nation and The Standard, have written about her plight, she says.

 

The BBC and some local TV channels have also run stories about her while the blogosphere has gone ballistic with stories chronicling her nightmare.

 

Somehow, somewhere, she was called the Canadian refugee. The name stuck.

 

"I could have never imagined that I would be called a refugee," she said yesterday by phone from Nairobi.

 

"I feel sad but I know people care about my situation and that's why they are writing about it."

 

Mohamud was on her way back to Toronto on May 21 when she was detained at Nairobi's airport for not looking like her four-year-old passport photo.

 

The Canadian High Commission in Kenya later said she was an imposter and cancelled her passport.

 

Mohamud has done everything to return home to her 12-year-old son.

 

People have stopped her on the streets and asked her how she was arrested at the airport, who put her into jail and if she needs any help.

 

One woman, three children in tow, even asked her to pose for a photograph.

 

Her story has created a buzz in Canada, especially Toronto, which has a large Somali population.

 

Two Toronto newspapers, Somali Canadian Times and Toronto Somali Press, have been highlighting Mohamud's case, said Mahad Yusuf, executive director of Midaynta Community Services, a settlement organization.

 

"Everyone knows what's happened with her," Yusuf said.

 

Most people are sad and angry but not surprised, he said. "It's not the first time a Somali has been harassed overseas. The community has had strange experiences when travelling, especially in Nairobi."

 

He said incidents of Somali expats being arrested, detained and thrown into jail by Kenyan officials have escalated in the past few years.

 

Their stories have been discussed threadbare by people, but what has sustained interest in Mohamud's case is the absurdity of it all, said Mohamed Busuri, editor of the Somali Canadian Times. "It's unbelievable (they) stopped her because her lips didn't match (those in her photo)," he said.

 

"People are talking about her and her son everywhere."

 

Mohamud, her ex-husband and son have submitted DNA samples to prove to the Canadian government she is who she says she is.

 

The Star

[Som@li]

Poor Canadian Citisenship does not do anything, Wadama qaarkood haday ahaan lahayd private jet baa loo diri lahaa

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Somali-born travellers pay a price

 

Kenyan airport official threatened Toronto man with jail. After handing over $50, he boarded flight

 

Seeing a woman desperately stranded in Kenya calls to mind other horror stories for Toronto Somali-born travellers.

 

"Many people have a very bad problem there," says Hussein Adani, a former Somali track star and owner of New Bilan restaurant on Dundas St. E.

 

Adani was returning from a two-month visit to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in 2000 when airport passport police stopped him.

 

It was the sort of holdup that has caused trouble for Toronto single mother Suaad Hagi Mohamud, so desperate after two months of trying to prove she is the woman in her four-year-old passport photo, that she went to court to have Canadian consular officials take her DNA this week.

 

"They have two signs," Adani said yesterday of the departure terminal at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. "One says 'Africans,' the other says 'Europeans and North Americans,' " he recalled. "I am Canadian. I lined up at the second sign."

 

When airport police asked why he was in the wrong line, Adani showed his Canadian passport and a visitor's visa issued by the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa.

 

"They told me, 'You will have a problem,' " he said. "They told me, 'We'll put you in jail, you will have to buy a new ticket tomorrow and your luggage will be gone.'

 

"I put $50 in my passport and gave it to the officer," Adani said. "When they opened it and saw the money, they said, `Thank you.'"

 

At Nairobi airport, every Somali-born Torontonian knows to expect to pay a bribe, said outreach worker Maryan Ali at North York Community House.

 

"They take only American money," she said of the airport police. "They look at the date and ask for the newest, 2000 and up. It is well known."

 

Such incidents are on the rise, said Mahad Yousuf, director of Midaynta Community Services. "People are travelling back and forth and asking us for help."

 

Calls to the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa went unreturned yesterday. In 2008, Transparency International said the chance of being asked for a bribe when dealing with Kenyan police was 93 per cent.

 

To make matters worse, relations between native Kenyans and ethnic Somalis remain tense. Since 1991, Somali refugees have been pouring over Kenya's northern border by the hundreds of thousands and an Islamist insurgency in Somalia threatens the entire region.

 

As a result, ethnic Somalis in Kenya are treated with suspicion even at the Canadian High Commission, community leaders say.

 

"The inadequate and sometimes casual attitude of the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi" exacerbates Kenya's "well documented history of institutional corruption," said Ebyan Farah, spokesperson for the Ottawa-based Canadian Somali Congress.

 

For Mohamud, callous treatment has extended to Ottawa's highest levels.

 

After she showed a dozen Canadian ID cards, spent weeks persuading Canadian consular officials to take her fingerprints and won a federal court action to have them take her DNA, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said she wasn't doing enough. "The individual has to be straightforward, has to let us know whether or not she is a Canadian citizen," Cannon told media after the federal court decision.

 

Yesterday, a spokesperson said Cannon had nothing to add.

 

Mohamud's DNA swabs are to arrive in a Vancouver lab on Tuesday to be matched with those from her ex-husband and son.

 

Star

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Don't blame Kanada, duqa. Blame the current regime in power, especially the prime minister.

 

I don't think the former prime minister of down under, John Howard, would have sent a 'private jet' to any Soomaali-Australian citizen. Asaga iyo kan hadda Kanada xukumo waa isku aragtiyee. Oh, meeshaada Kiwiland ahayd ileen. Wali naagtii maa xukunto taloow.

[Kool_Kat]

DNA test proves stranded Canadian's identity: lawyer

 

The lawyer for a Canadian woman stranded in Kenya said he will file a motion in Federal Court on Tuesday, asking the federal government to issue an emergency passport so she can return home after a DNA test confirmed her identity.

 

Raoul Boulakia, the lawyer for Suaad Haji Mohamud, said he received the genetic test report on Monday afternoon, and it proves that she is the mother of a 12-year-old boy living in Toronto, confirming who she says she is.

 

"The DNA test says that it's 99.99 per cent established that she is the mother of her child, Mohamed," he told CBC News.

 

"It means that she is definitely who she says she is," Boulakia said from Toronto. "There's no way to debate this anymore, so the government really has nothing more [it] can say about this."

 

Mohamud, 31, hasn't been allowed to return to Toronto since mid-May when she tried to leave Nairobi following a two-week visit with her mother there.

 

Kenyan immigration officials said her facial features looked the same, but her lips looked different than those of the person in the passport photo, according to a document from Kenyan authorities.

 

Canadian officials in Kenya confiscated her passport and concluded she was an impostor.

 

The Canadian government later wrote to the Kenyan government informing officials there that it had done a thorough investigation and determined her to be an imposter and recommended that she be prosecuted.

 

Kenyan officials charged her with identity fraud, and Mohamud's court case began in May but was put on hold pending the DNA test, Boulakia said.

 

With results in hand, Boulakia said he will file a motion Tuesday asking the court for an emergency passport so she can be repatriated to Canada and reunited with her son.

 

On learning the DNA results, Mohamud told CBC News she jumped for joy, but still wonders why it happened to her.

 

"She's been through hell," Boulakia said. "She's been in prison in Nairobi … This'll be a light at the end of the tunnel."

 

Son Mohamed Hussein, who hasn't seen his mother for three months, told CBC News he was elated and relieved that she'll be able to return to Canada.

 

"I'm feeling very happy … that she's going to come back," he said.

 

Mohamud has said that she lost a lot of weight in the four years since her passport photo was taken. She showed the Kenyans other pieces of Canadian identification and offered to be fingerprinted. But she was charged with identity fraud and spent eight days in jail before she was released on bail.

 

Boulakia said the federal government should review how Canadian consulates behave when citizens go to them for help.

 

"Our consulates don't necessarily do anything logical to figure out a person's identity," he said.

 

"I'd hate to be stuck in some country and call my embassy for help and get a reaction like this."

 

A spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency, which is handling calls on the matter, said the agency recognizes the DNA results but that it cannot comment further while Mohamud's case is still before the courts.

 

Source

Now that the DNA results are in, bal let's see what our great government officials pull out of thier hats this time...

 

Allaha usoo fududeeyo...

[Che -Guevara]

The Canadian government is USELESS and quite honestly prejudice.

 

A Yankee gets locked up anywhere in the world, we send the big boy himself.

[Raamsade]

^And yet Somalis (and other immigrants) go to "USELESS and quite honestly prejudice" by the droves.

 

Go figure!

[Raamsade]

^And yet Somalis (and other immigrants) go to "USELESS and quite honestly prejudice" Canada by the droves.

 

Go figure!

[N.O.R.F]

I can't believe this has dragged on for this long. Canadian authorities should be brought to book.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

I hope she sues this xenophobic Stephen Harper regime. They are now dragging their feet because in la sue gareeyo ka cabsanooyaan, which will be inevitable.

 

It is scary it can be like this, iyadoo cunug leh waliba. Ka waran qof single ah haddee ahaan lahayd. What would those neo-cons excuses would have been?

 

I thank the Toronto Star keeping this case in the limelight.

[Kool_Kat]

Feds prepare emergency papers for stranded woman

 

 

The Toronto lawyer for a Canadian woman stranded in Kenya since May says the Canadian government will work towards having her bail dropped in the country so she can return home.

 

 

Somalian-born Suaad Hagi Mohamud, a 31-year-old Canadian citizen, was visiting her mother in Kenya and was in the airport to fly back to Canada when a Kenyan official stopped her to say she wasn't the same person pictured in her four-year-old passport.

 

After going to the Canadian high commission in an effort to prove her identity with numerous pieces of identification, officials voided her passport and sent her to Kenyan authorities for prosecution.

 

Mohamud's lawyer, Raoul Boulakia, told CTV.ca that Mohamud is meeting with Canadian officials in Kenya early Wednesday morning, and in the best-case scenario she could be home by Sunday.

 

Boulakia has filed a motion with the Federal Court to force the government to issue an emergency passport, which will be heard on Thursday.

 

"Because we are before the court I really believe it's possible for us to get a resolution for this," he said Tuesday evening.

 

Officials with Canada Border Services Agency said Tuesday they were preparing emergency documents for Mohamud, one day after DNA tests confirmed her identity.

 

The agency did not say how long it would be before the documentation was ready.

 

Mohamud was stranded after a Kenyan official said the size of her lips and her eyeglasses were different than in her passport photo.

 

She then went to the Canadian high commission in an effort to prove her identity. She showed them her Ontario driver's licence, her health card, social insurance card and a Canadian citizenship certificate.

 

Mohamud also had other pieces that would seemingly prove her identity, such as her credit card, bank cards and a letter from her Toronto employer.

 

She even had a receipt to a Toronto dry cleaner and her Shoppers Drug Mart "Optimum" card.

 

But the Canadian high commission rejected them all and voided her passport, which was sent to Kenyan immigration officials to help prosecute her.

 

She then spent eight days in jail before being released on bail.

 

Boulakia said the Canadian government needs to release all the details of their investigation that led to her being charged by the Kenyan authorities.

 

"They don't want to and they should, Canadians should be entitled to know how our embassies treat citizens who ask for their protection," he said.

 

The lawyer also said the government should release clear rules on how they identify citizens abroad.

 

Link

Walee tan mucjiso wey aragtay...I guess she won't be travelling anywhere near Nairobi any time in the foreseeable future... :eek:

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

[N.O.R.F]

Give her a big welcome back reer Koronto