Suaad Hagi Mohamud came home to frenzied enthusiasm in mid-August, vindicated by DNA results that prompted Canadian authorities to repatriate her from Kenya.

Since then, the Toronto woman of Somali origin who became one of the summer’s top newsmakers has disappeared from public view, resolutely declining all interviews. She was last heard from in late September, having recovered from a respiratory infection picked up in Kenya but not yet returned to work.

Her ordeal began May 21, when a KLM airlines employee in Nairobi stopped her – or a woman claiming to be her – as she attempted to board a plane home to Toronto.

The next day, Canadian migrant integrity officer Paul Jamieson interviewed the woman and declared her an imposter, setting in motion events that led to a jail stay and Kenyan charges of immigration and passport violations.

A lengthy prison sentence looked certain.

The woman was free on bail while awaiting trial and eventually the case was picked up by the Star and some other Canadian media.

Under pressure, the Canadian government agreed to the DNA test which showed the woman who took it was Mohamud, a Canadian citizen.

The furor around her plight prompted a political debate about whether the federal government has double standards when dealing with visible minority citizens in difficulties abroad.

Since then, documents filed in federal court show neither Mohamud nor Canadian authorities had been entirely straightforward in their public dealings.

Throughout the affair, Mohamud portrayed herself as a single parent, travelling alone to visit her mother after leaving her son in Toronto.

In fact, she is married to a Kenyan resident and was in the country partly to visit him. She disclosed the marriage when claiming $100,000 in damages on his behalf, part of a $2.5 million lawsuit against Ottawa for “callous and reckless treatment” on the imposter allegation.

At the same time, publicly released emails between federal bureaucrats in Ottawa and Nairobi show they agreed to state the opposite of what they knew to be true.

When federal officials closed their file on Mohamud on May 28, turning her over to Kenya for prosecution, they decided to state publicly that they were still investigating, the exchanges show.

“Canadian officials are working with Kenyan authorities to verify the identity of the individual,” foreign affairs spokesperson Daniel Barbarie told reporters from a prepared script.

And when the officials reopened their investigation – “It is important to ensure our t’s are crossed and i’s dotted,” a minister’s assistant wrote – they agreed to say publicly the file was still closed.

“Following an extensive investigation, officials at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi have determined that the individual arrested by Kenyan authorities is not (Mohamud),” Barbarie told reporters.

In a federal court affidavit this fall, Jamieson speculated that the woman he interviewed was Mohamud’s younger sister Jihan. Such a sister was listed on Mohamud’s original Canadian immigration application, he said.

Mohamud said in a phone interview that she has no sister. Somebody else had filled out her original immigration application, she said.

“The person they (stopped) at the airport, it was me,” Mohamud said.

Her lawsuit against Ottawa could take months to go to trial.

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Toronto Star

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