The Last Exile

The Toronto Star article releases the pictures which started the ordeal. The photo on the left is the Kenya airport picture allegedly taken of Suaad Hagi Mohamud on arrival and the other picture is her ‘departure’ pictures was taken as she was being interrogated at Nairobi airport. The distress from her ordeal is obvious from her photo. My best guess is that the first picture was taken with a wide angle lens of some kind but there are rather obvious identification marks between the two pictures. The eyebrow shape, the lip lines, the shape of her nose and the proportion from shoulders to neck and the hair line remains similar. Seeing the departure picture taken at the Nairobi airport suggests to me that she did in fact resemble her passport photo sans glasses.
The CBC has details which the Toronto Star does not carry concerning the alleged inconsistencies.

In one interview with the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, Mohamud indicated she was a student at Humber College and was studying fashion design. But in another interview, she denied it and said she was only thinking about going to school at Seneca College. The documents allege she lacked knowledge about Toronto, where she had lived for 10 years.

She couldn’t name Lake Ontario, and even though she took public transit to work, she had trouble explaining the acronym TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission. She didn’t know that the acronym for her Toronto workplace, ATS, stood for Andlauer Transportation Services. She also couldn’t name the current or previous prime minister and was unable to describe in any detail how she obtained her driver’s licence.

The documents also allege she gave a wrong date for her son’s birthday and couldn’t provide details on the circumstances or place of his birth. Mohamud also provided an incorrect date of her marriage, saying first that she was married in 2006, which contradicted the July 4, 1996, date on her immigration application. Mohamud divorced her first husband and married a Kenyan man in December 2007. The Canadian High Commission officer who conducted the interviews said Mohamud looked different from her passport photo, that she was six or seven centimetres shorter than her driver’s licence stated and that her signature wasn’t the same.

By the end of the second hour-long interview, the officer suspected he was talking to an impostor, possibly Mohamud’s younger sister, according to the documents.

Ah, the impostor theory. Well, the problem I with this alleged explanation is that the woman who provided supporting documentation, in addition to her passport to a consular official at the airport where she was being detained, just happens to be the same woman who showed up on numerous occasions at the High Commission office. No one to date alleges the same woman in detention didn’t show up at the High Commission’s office.

And while the unnamed consular official alleges she was 6-7 centimetres shorter in person than her driving licence photo. Six to Seven centimetres does not translate 6-7 into inches. My guess is that her driver’s license photo and height were taken when she was wearing a pair of 2 1/2 to 3 inch heels on. Although, if proof of Canadian citizenship now rests with the height on your driver’s license – I must tell my mother that her citizenship is now in jeopardy as my mother’s drivers license claims she is 5′2”, but she is a good three inches shorter than me and I stand 5′ and 3/4”.

Frankly, the other alleged questions she failed to answer to the satisfaction of the consular official sound a bit flimsy to me. Son’s birthday, I personally can never seem to keep the years straight between the children and I don’t remember off the top of my head the dates of my previous marriages. It just never seemed important to remember what is not being celebrated. But how would an impostor, who was attempting to sneak into the country just happen to know the names of two Canadian Toronto based colleges handy in their memory? No slur or smear meant to the colleges, but neither Humber or Seneca are high enough profile to be considered internationally renowned so that an African impostor could reel off their names without preamble.

The other ‘alleged’ inconsistencies seem quite consistent with a woman under emotional distress which no doubt she was. I suspect I could interview a 100 people at the corner of Yonge & Dundas and a goodly portion would not be able to name the current or past prime minister of Canada or what the name of the lake is which borders Toronto…and they wouldn’t be under duress, but then, we have only the word of the government she answered ‘inconsistently’, and at this point, I am not willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt without physical evidence and multiple witnesses.

Of course, we do have an advantage that the unnamed consular official did not have. We know beyond question that Suaad Hagi Mohamud is exactly who she claims to be. Furthermore, we know the government was going to defend the actions of consular officials in their Statement of Defense but what is far more interesting to me is what the government statement of defense doesn’t claim; which is this – the individual interviewed and detained at the Nairobi Airport did not resemble her citizenship card, her driver’s license or her Ontario Health Card.