Canadian trapped in Kenya awaits travel documents
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 | 9:54 PM ET
CBC News
Related
Internal Links
Video
- Julie Van Dusen reports: Canadian trapped in Kenya awaits travel documents (Runs: 2:33)
- Play: QuickTime »
- Play: Real Media »
- CBC's Janet Stewart interviews Raoul Boulakia, lawyer for stranded Canadian (Runs: 5:54)
- Play: Real Media »
- Play: QuickTime »
- CBC's Harry Forestell interviews Gar Pardy, former head of Canadian consular services (Runs: 7:55)
- Play: QuickTime »
- Play: Real Media »
Emergency travel documents are being readied for a Canadian woman whose DNA test has proven she is not an imposter and should not have been stranded in Kenya for months.
Canada Border Services Agency spokeswoman Tracie LeBlanc said Tuesday work is being done to issue Suaad Hagi Mohamud travel documents for her return to Canada now that DNA tests have proven her identity.
LeBlanc declined to specify whether the documents include an emergency passport or when Mohamud would return.
Suaad Hagi Mohamud is pictured in her Canadian passport photo. (CBC) 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.
In an interview with CBC News on Tuesday, she said she is angry at the Canadian government for the way it handled her case.
"My Canadian High Commission told me that I'm an imposter," Mohamud said. "They wouldn't believe me.
"Of course I'm mad at them."
Mohamud's ordeal began when Kenyan immigration officials said her facial features looked the same, but her lips looked different than those of the person in the four-year-old Canadian passport photo, according to a document from Kenyan authorities.
The High Commission of Canada in Nairobi confiscated and voided her passport, told Kenyan government officials a thorough investigation determined Mohamud was an imposter and recommended that she be prosecuted.
Mohamud, who was born in Somalia, 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.
Mohamud alleges she was being pushed to offer bribe money to be allowed to get on the plane to return home and she refused to pay.
'How wrong they are'
Her court case began in May but was put on hold pending the results of testing done on DNA collected from Mohamud, her ex-husband and their son in Toronto, which confirmed her identity on Monday.
Canadian officials in Kenya confiscated the passport of Suaad Hagi Mohamud and concluded she was an impostor. (CBC) "I am doing everything to prove them wrong — how wrong they are," she said.
Mohamud said she was confident all along that her identity would be proven. "If you are who you are, then you are who you are," she said.
Mohamud's lawyer, Raoul Boulakia, said the federal government should review how Canadian diplomatic missions behave when citizens go to them for help.
"I'd hate to be stuck in some country and call my embassy for help and get a reaction like this," he said.
Boulakia added he hopes the Canadian government will ask Kenya to drop all charges against Mohamud because they are a result of Canadian officials saying the voided passport was not hers.
Boulakia said his client is an example of a disturbing trend, that of Canadians who are stranded overseas with no support from Ottawa.
"Well, it seems like that this government sees some Canadian citizens as second-class citizens," he said. "They seem to treat it almost as if, 'You deserve whatever happened to you and why should we be helping you?'"
With files from The Canadian PressShare Tools
Latest Toronto News Headlines
- Truck dangles on overpass after 401 crash in Ajax
- A section of Highway 401 is closed for hours after a tractor-trailer collides with an SUV, slides off the highway and hangs perilously over the roadway below. more »
- GO Transit train damaged by debris on tracks
- A GO Transit train is damaged after striking a short track section that appears to have been deliberately laid over the rails. more »
- Everest team unable to bring down Toronto woman's body
- Bad weather has hampered the recovery team that is attempting to bring down the body of a Toronto woman who died trying to climb Mt. Everest. more »
- Man shot dead in Oshawa
- A man in is mid-30s is dead after he was shot at a house in Oshawa on Friday night. more »
Top News Headlines
- Teen struck by lightning in Ottawa dies
- The victim of a Friday lightning strike during a storm in east Ottawa has died, CBC News has learned. more »
- Montreal protesters march in peaceful defiance
- The clanging of pots and pans sounded throughout Montreal's downtown core Saturday night and into early Sunday morning, as thousands of protesters marched on in peaceful — but loud — defiance of Bill 78. more »
- Syrian children massacred by the dozens, UN says
- More than 90 people have been killed by regime forces in a district of central Syria, with the head of the UN team in the country confirming at least 32 children and 60 adults were killed in an artillery attack. more »
- Missing Winnipeg children found in Mexico
- Two Winnipeg children reported missing and possibly in Mexico have been found alive, according to unofficial reports from an agency that works to find missing people. more »
- Everest victim's husband says family not seeking government help
- Truck dangles on overpass after 401 crash in Ajax
- Brampton family seeks woman missing since Thursday
- GO Transit train damaged by debris on tracks
- 'Save me' last words of Mount Everest climber
- Timmins fire crews aided by calmer winds
- Everest team unable to bring down Toronto woman's body
- Man shot dead in Oshawa
- Serial carjacker gets life term for fatal crash

