Suaad Hagi Mohamud talks about being stranded in Kenya in an exclusive interview with CBC's Diana Swain. (CBC)

A Toronto woman who was stranded in Kenya over false claims she was an impostor said she believes the colour of her skin played a role in her ordeal.

In an exclusive interview with the CBC's Diana Swain, Suaad Hagi Mohamud was asked whether she thought things would have been different if she were white.

"I wouldn’t be stopped at the Kenyan airport if I'm a white," Mohamud said.

"The Canadian High Commission wouldn’t be treating me the way they treat me. If I'm a white person, I wouldn't be there in one day. I wouldn't have missed the flight."

Mohamud, 31, who was visiting her mother in Kenya, had been stranded in the country since May after Kenyan authorities said she didn't look like the picture in her passport photo.

Mohamud, who filed a $2.6-million lawsuit against the federal government Friday, said the reaction by officials to her situation was "really frustrating" because "deep inside I thought we all the same."

She said her ordeal began when a KLM worker stopped her and looked at her documents and said that she did not look like her photos.

Mohamud said she was asked to pay a bribe to "make the problem go away."

"They make you miserable, tired, give up, for some money there."

But she said she never considered paying a bribe, saying she’s "always a straight person" and that she had done nothing wrong.

Canadian consular officials called her an impostor, voided her passport and urged Kenyan officials to prosecute her, even after Mohamud handed over numerous pieces of identification, offered fingerprints and finally demanded that her DNA be tested.

She was charged on May 28 with identity fraud and spent eight days in jail.

Mohamud said prison was horrible and that she was put in with gang members, killers and thieves.

"It's really horrible and a bad place to be. It's not something I can describe — the food, the sickness I get over there."

She said she tried everything to prove who she was and asked officials to call her 12-year-old son in Toronto.

"Why don’t you just call him and say, 'Where is your mom? Where is she? Where [did] she go? Are you with someone?' In that case, they will know if they really wanted to find out."

DNA tests proved Mohamud was who she said she was and the charges were dropped. She returned to Toronto on Saturday.

She said she blames the Canadian government, saying they "let me down, big time.

"No matter where we are, where we go, we're all citizens and I believe that we don't have a different level, we're all Canadian citizens," she said.

"I'm just asking the government to get up and back up their people wherever they are."