Somali Canadian to get out of no-man’s land

Nairobi — Suaad Hagi Mohamud should be dancing for joy. After 21/2 months of seedy hotel living, court dates, fingerprint tests, facial analyses, time in one of Kenya’s more notorious jails, and, finally, a DNA test, the Toronto woman on trial in Kenya because Canadian officials mistakenly labelled her an imposter will be free this week to return home, according to her Toronto lawyer.

It has been a victory for friends, lawyers, Somali supporters and human rights activists, who have striven for weeks to win her passage back to her home and 12-year-old son in Toronto.

For now, though, it seems she will have to celebrate the bureaucratic way – by filling out more forms. For Ms. Mohamud, 31, it was, at least, better than more drama.

“They told me to file my passport application,” she said Wednesday, explaining that the application would be used to secure an emergency travel document. “Somehow it was a relief.”

When an official at the Canadian high commission in Nairobi called yesterday afternoon bidding her to hurry to an appointment, her supporters hoped for swift action to affirm her Canadian citizenship and her legal status in Kenya. Most of all they hoped for an apology. They didn’t get either.

“Whatever they did is really a big mistake,” she said. “I was afraid for my own life. I’m here telling them I am really a Canadian citizen. I feel like a prisoner of war with no blanket, no nothing.”

Instead, a meeting is scheduled for Friday morning local time where, Ms. Mohamud has been informed, she will be officially cleared of all legal proceedings against her.

“The Kenyans were prosecuting her because Canada asked for her to be prosecuted,” said Raoul Boulakia, her Toronto lawyer. “As soon as Canada tells Kenya, ‘Oh, we made a mistake,’ Kenya is happy to let her go. They don’t want to be holding Canadian citizens in jail in Kenya. Canadian tourists go to Kenya. This isn’t good for Kenya.”

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty sided with Ms. Mohamud yesterday, arguing, “something is fundamentally wrong when we can’t count on the Canadian government to stand up for Canadians.

“Canadians expect their government to help them when they’re in distress, no matter where they are,” he added. “That didn’t happen in this particular circumstance, and there’s no excuse for that.”

Ms. Mohamud has been stranded in Kenya, where she was visiting her mother, ever since May 21st , when a Kenyan airline official said she didn’t look enough like a passport photo taken four years ago: her cheekbones were too pronounced, and her lips were too big.

After studying the 12 additional forms of identification Ms. Mohamud presented them with, including a driver’s licence and government health card, Canadian consular officials agreed.

Back in Canada, their counterparts spoke to her son. Later he told his mom:

“They started saying, ‘where is your mom? That is not your mom,’” she reported.

The Canadian high commission in Nairobi punched a hole through the passport and returned it to Kenyan immigration officials with a letter confirming that the woman who claimed to be Suaad Hagi Mohamud was an imposter.

Instead of sending her to prison, the Kenyans released her, giving her a week to sort things out with her government. The high commission, though, had made up its mind, refusing Ms. Mohamud’s entreaties to take her fingerprints and get back in touch with her family, friends and colleagues in Toronto to follow up on initial interviews done from Ontario.

“I have been begging them in the high commission at least to contact my friends and my family,” she said. “I give them even my son’s phone number, my uncle’s phone number and nobody called. I gave the number for my family back there, my work number and nobody ever called.”

Ms. Mohamud was charged by the Kenyan government with travelling using false documents and of being in the country illegally. She was sent to await trial in Langata Women’s Prison, where she was treated like just about any other inmate.

“The prison is horrible place to be,” she said. “They only give one meal. Besides that, the water is not clean: if you ask the guards to buy a bottle, they charge double. They are not going to be friendly with you. They see you as just like the rest of the people. They see they can get what they want from you.”

After eight days, Ms. Mohamud’s mother and friends managed to cobble together enough cash to cover her $2,600 bail.

Released, she found herself consigned to a legal no man’s land.

Without her passport, she had no Kenyan visa. Without a replacement document from the Canadians, there was nowhere for immigration to put a visa. She couldn’t go home. But she also couldn’t stay. At any moment she could be picked up by Kenyan police.

“It happens so many times, they check Somalis,” she said. “If I don’t have a visa, they have a right to put me in jail. Always whenever I go out, I have to take some money and I ask someone to go with me. I don’t want to go through again what I have been through.”

Now, with the DNA test showing a 99.99 per cent match with her son, Mohamed Hussein, it seems her predicament could end as soon as Friday.

“Kenyan immigration contacted her lawyer in Nairobi and gave him an appointment for Friday at 10 o’clock their time,” Mr. Boulakia said. “And they said that on Friday at 10 o’clock, they will clear everything up. They will dispose of whatever is before the court. So based on that, I believe that she can be in a position to travel back to Canada Friday night.”

Foreign Affairs spokesperson Emma Welford confirmed the Friday meeting and said that travel arrangements will be made as soon as the Kenyan charges are dropped.

There’s one problem, though. After waiting for so long, Ms. Mohamud feels like she’s now being pushed out too quickly. She doesn’t think she will be ready to leave until next week. Once her case has been cleared, she is determined to collect bail and repay her friends before she leaves.

“I have to get that money back,” she said. “They just leave me here for three months and now they come rushing like go, go, go. I have lot of things to take care of.”

Source: The Globe and Mail

By Zoe Alsop

Special to The Globe and Mail, with reports from Bill Curry in Ottawa and The Canadian Press