The Last Exile

There is something ubiquitous about national security now that the Conservatives are running the show. In fact, national security now seems to be have been expanded to include anything which might show the Conservative government in a bad light rather than a threat to the security to the citizens of Canada. Toronto Star

OTTAWA–A former governor of Kandahar who is accused of personally torturing Afghans might have been removed from office as far back as 2006 if Canadian officials hadn’t defended him, according to diplomatic memos that have never been made public by the Canadian government.

The revelation about Asadullah Khalid, who stayed on as governor two years after concerns about his reputation were raised, opens up another embarrassing avenue of inquiry over Afghan prisoner abuse.

The new allegation is contained in a two-year-old report by Richard Colvin, the whistleblower foreign service officer. Colvin’s disgust that Canada would support a “known human-rights abuser” was palpable and formed the most incendiary paragraphs of the report. References to Khalid were entirely blacked out in the version of the report publicly released to the Military Police Complaints Commission.

But an uncensored version of the end-of-mission report was shown for the first time to The Canadian Press on a confidential basis. “As far as I know, Canada has never suggested to (President Hamid) Karzai that Asadullah be replaced,” says the memo, dated Oct. 24, 2007. “In the one meeting where the subject was discussed, in July 2006, it was the president who raised the issue; Canada defended the governor, thereby ensuring his continued tenure.” The uncensored report sheds further light on Colvin’s testimony last month before a special House of Commons committee, where he stated the governor was considered a “bad actor” on human rights.

So many of my ‘Torie’ compatriots have taken to parroting the line Afghanistan is a tough neighbourhood and we should all just buck up and shut up but what they appear to forget – is the peril and cost of letting evil triumph while good men do nothing.

The warnings about Khalid – whose brazen decision to display the battered dead body of a revered Taliban leader to local Afghan media, before refusing to return it for a proper burial, triggered a massive bombing campaign in Kandahar city in the spring of 2007 – were heard loud and clear in Ottawa.

The implications of the spring bombing campaign in the spring of 2007 triggered by Khalid’s barbarity should all make us pause given that Canadian soldiers were operating in and around Kandahar in the spring of 2007. In the un-redacted memos; there is no safe place for the Torie government to hide.

Concerns were serious enough to be raised at the highest levels of the federal government, foreign affairs and defence sources said. A meeting was called in December 2006 in Ottawa to discuss the matter. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s national security adviser, Margaret Bloodworth, attended the session, sources have said. “There was no policy for dealing with something like this, something sensitive,” one source said. “Nobody quite knew what to do.”

Yet throughout 2007 the warnings kept getting louder. A foreign affairs source said a memo sent by Colvin in the winter of 2007 was searing in its criticism and indicated the governor was corrupt, dangerous, self-serving and deeply unpopular with Afghans. One Afghan government official apparently pleaded with Canadian diplomats and police officers for Khalid’s removal during a meeting in February 2007, said the source, who has seen a document outlining the meeting. The official made a direct request to Canada to intervene with the president, the source said. Two months later, a prisoner handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces alleged Khalid had personally tortured him in a facility next to his palace, according to a memo from Colvin’s colleague, Gavin Buchan, on April 25.

Never have I lived through a Canadian government so unready and unable to meet the challenges of governing.

I would never have thought it possible for anything to happen to make me care less about Tiger Woods than I already do, but alas, the media feeding frenzy of Tiger Woods’ domestic situation is making my lack of tolerance meter jump into the danger zone. Enough already. There isn’t really anything even vaguely compelling about him – he’s a professional golfer for heaven’s sake.

I was never much of a CNN fan but if I had to choose my late night falling in front of the television news coverage – I prefer Aaron Brown to Anderson Cooper. I’ll take a well-meaning middle aged liberal bumbler over a the sneering of a young metrosexual any day of the week – with or without the tears. Nothing makes me want to give a man a good cuff to the head like crying on television. So its with a sweet sense of schadenfreude that I see Cooper’s ratings slip lower and lower in the rating race.

Climategate. I really don’t care about the internal discussion between scientists trying to discuss possible reasons why the weather is not cooperating with their climate models. I never bought into the whole-global-warming-we-are-all-going-to-die because I am 47 years old and I have already lived through the sun-is-going-to-burn-out – the-population-explosion-will-occur-and-mass- famine-will-result- the-nuclear-bomb-will-drop-and-we-will-all-die meme a few times. And while most of my conservative peers are ooohing and ahhing over the alleged climate hoax I would like to point out; you are missing the big picture. The world is a finite resource and its in our best interest to conserve not only energy but everything we consume on a daily basis. If there is a better, safe and cleaner way to do anything – that is where our energies should be directed. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend there are no global pollution issues but pollution is merely not a Chinese problem – air travels and when it does – it brings along the Chinese toxic sludge. Some days, it hard to believe ‘conserve’ is at the root of the word ‘conservative’.

Apparently, Windsor Police Chief Gary Smith has gotten himself into hot water with ‘anti-muslim’ community which sees any action that reeks of tolerance or consideration for the religious sensibilities of Canadian Muslims as a betrayal to the larger non-Muslim community rather than what it really is – a a gesture of respect. CBC

Windsor, Ont.’s chief of police has publicly apologized to the city’s Islamic community after officers who arrested two Muslim men suspected of involvement in a radical Islamist group offended and embarrassed the men’s families in the process.

“We’re looking at what we can do differently, what we would do differently here, and that’s going to take us a little while longer,” Chief Gary Smith told a news conference on Thursday. His comments relate to an incident on Oct. 30 during which Windsor police assisted the RCMP in arresting Yassir Ali Khan, 30, and Mohammad Al-Sahli, 33. The two were wanted by the the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges of conspiracy to commit federal crimes. During that arrest, the wife of one of the suspects was padded down by a male officer.

One of the things me and the tribe often do in the summer is sit out on the porch in the evenings and watch the Toronto Police raid various homes up and down the street. Its one of the unofficial perks of living on the downtown eastside – we do not have to watch cops shows on television to be entertained.

Being a veteran Toronto Police raid watcher there was one thing about this Windsor raid which struck me as unusual and that is the fact that no woman officer was present to pat down any potential females found in house during the raid. While I recognize my experience is purely anecdotal I suspect the reason for having a female officer on site is to protect the any females from any questionable or inappropriate conduct by a male officer as well as working to ensure a defence from unfounded charges of inappropriate conduct by a male officer towards a female suspect. And before anyone gets on their high horse I would simply state its not unheard of for a male police officer to be charged and convicted of sexual assault before.

But it isn’t only religious Muslim woman who would find it humiliating and/or being unnecessarily degrading to be ‘patted down’ by a male officer. Religious Jewish women wouldn’t be thrilled either. I do not see how a small accommodation to the religious sensibilities of others is necessarily a bad thing. But by all means, go ahead and convince me.

There was a time when Canadians were famous for their tolerance and respect towards others. I am glad to see Windsor Police Chief Gary Smith hasn’t entirely lost sight of that value even if other Canadians see it as sign of submission rather than a strength of character.

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.

The Conservatives issued a press release which described Warren Kinsella as a “disgraced Chretien backroom organizer”. Warren Kinsella is suing, probably for defamation/libel, but the interesting part to me is the defence the Conservative party is claiming. CP

In a statement of defence filed Monday, the Tories reject Kinsella’s libel charge, arguing that “open discussion is the lifeblood of democracy.” …The Tory statement says the release was not motivated by “malice or bad faith or acting as part of a conspiracy to injure” the political provocateur….The Tory statement of defence maintains that Kinsella is in fact “disgraced” among what it calls “right-thinking members of the Canadian public and within the Liberal party itself.”… “Democracy depends upon the free and open debate of public policy issues and the freedom to criticize those who exercise power and authority in our society,” says the statement.

I have no idea whether Warren Kinsella is a ‘disgraced Chretien backroom organizer’ and rather suspect he isn’t and its more a question of wishful thinking and projection on the part of the Conservative Party in Canada. I would have thought press releases by nature are to inform the general public of whatever activities your brand-entity is up to rather than be a platform to commit a drive-by slime on a political opponent. My bad.

Secondly, this idea that ‘democracy depends upon free and open debate of public policy issues and the freedom to criticize those who exercise power and authority in our society’ rests on the ‘right’ to use public defamation of one’s political opponents is not only puerile but entirely comedic. Generally, the voting public in this country grew-up and were more than happy to leave the playground behind. Or at least some of us did. Who knew there was actually a political party ready to represent the Peter Pans among us? I consider the whole free and open debate of public policy defense coming from a governing political party which has so far refused to hold a public and open inquiry into the Suaad Hagi Mohamud matter more than a little hard to stomach.

A comment of mine didn’t pass the sniff test. Not because I was angry, rude or obnoxious… or called anyone any kind of names, issued a death threat, or a even a curse. I didn’t even get an opportunity to be personally insulting to the ‘host’ blogger – all things, which depending on my mood, could get a commenter potentially banned at my site.

In fact, my comment was relatively innocuous except I did commit the high crime and misdemeanour at a ‘Blogging Tory’ site – I wasn’t in lock step with the writer’s thinking. I don’t remember my exact wording (note to self – save all comments which I write). My high crime and misdemeanour was to question, just question, a few of the writer’s premises in the Suaad Hagi Mohamud matter. I asked Sandy Crux to explain why she felt Suaad Hagi Mohamud didn’t look like her passport photo and asked if she’d seen it with her own eyes. All I have ever seen was a photocopy of the passport and in my opinion she resembles herself. I also asked what what would be an appropriate legal redress for when the government screws you over and hangs you out to dry if a lawsuit isn’t considered ‘kosher’.  
 
For my time and trouble I got this:

To Kateland — I did not approve your comment because I simply don’t want to get into an angry debate here about Ms. Mohamud’s passport photo — since a lawsuit is pending.
However, I will repeat one thing I have said: Before anyone leaves Canada, they should make absolutely sure they look like their current passport photo — hair style similar, head scarf worn the same way, facial features clear, and so on. If there is any doubt, they should renew their passport before they go anywhere.

While Canadian officials are expected to help us in some instances, they can only make sure we are getting fair treatment. They cannot override the regulations or laws of the foreign country involved. It is what the former Liberal Foreign Minister Bill Graham said at the time he was trying to secure the release of William Sampson from Saudi Arabia was “soft diplomacy.”
However, we live in a world where terrorists want to do us harm, so nothing is certain anymore and one reason I no longer travel beyond Canadian and U.S. Borders.

I did see this little note tacked on the end of her blog post, but still, I thought my comment passed the sniff test as I didn’t directly address the failure of the conservative government directly.

Please note: Comments will automatically be approved when one comment has previously been approved. However, new visitors need to know that I will not be approving any comments that are not debating the issues but are simply anti-Conservative.

The irony of the dinning table unleashed in that first sentence is not lost on me. She won’t discuss the passport photo since a ‘lawsuit’ is pending. Well, well, and yet on her post she writes thus:

So, while I initially had great sympathy for Ms. Mohamud, that is no longer the case given that  she is going to sue the Canadian government (taxpayers) for $2.5 million dollars for her “86 day journey of self-doubt.” While those 86 days must have been very difficult, of that I have no doubt, why is she not recognizing her own role in the whole debacle – that she no longer looks like her four-year old passport photo?

And, why has the “R” factor come up? Ms. Mohamud is black. The Kenyans are black. If there was any racism, it would have been black on black. As far as the Canadian officials, what are they to do when a person doesn’t look like their passport photo — and not restricting their travel could put hundreds of lives at risk?

Its all well and good to blame the Kenyans, except this whole sorry saga when have not gone anywhere fast if the Consular officials were on the ball. How do I know they weren’t doing their job? Well, her physical identity was established independently and scientifically. Not only did Suaad Hagi Mohamud possess more government issued ID than I physically own to back up her passport but she had more than a few Canadians resident in Canada willing to attest to her identity if the Consular Affairs only bothered to ask.

Rejecting any individual Canadian citizenship and denying a basic charter right should require a thorough investigation. An investigation cannot even begin to be considered thorough if the High Commission did not contact at least contact the passport holder’s various guarantors. How do I know the High Commission did not contact Mohamud’s guarantors – by the speed (less than 20 hours passed) in which Canadian consular officials rejected and voided her passport and then turned her over to Kenyan officials requesting her prosecution for passport fraud. Its all very well to play the demon card of national security but this is not license to deny a basic charter right to a Canadian citizen.

I have commented at hundreds of sites and raised the hackles of more than a few bloggers. I have been called more names than I have fingers, accused of single-handedly being responsible for the rise of anti-Semitism in the world and have had more than a few death threats sitting in my in-box. I have had a representative of the Muslim brotherhood (UK Chapter) come calling and felt free enough to comment. I have had more than a few complaints issued to blogger over my alleged ‘objectionable’ content and my site attacked.

In fact, at James Bow’s site I often get downright snarky but guess what? James still lets me comment. Okay, James is probably one of the nicest writers blogging so maybe he doesn’t count. Dr. Dawg and I have fought over the same bone on many occasions both at my own site and his, and it can get downright ugly at times but Dr. Dawg lets me comment. I visit Stage Left and if I have anything to add I have been more than welcome to tussle. Balbulican use to comment regularly at my own site until one day we were arguing and I felt a comment of his was not only over my personal insult quota but was remarkably unlike and beneath him. I removed it and he took offence to my removing it and has never come back to comment. Its too bad, because I rather like reading what he has to say and he gets snark. Shlemazl who gets under everyone’s skin more times than not disagrees with me regularly and does not hesitate to say so but even he doesn’t have a problem when I disagree with him. I am free to comment there at his place. All of which brings me to Canadian Cynic. Now CC has called me a dumb cunt (or maybe it as a dumb fucking cunt) and made a rather over the top anti-Semitic insinuation about me but I am still free to say whatever.

But I like to read what he has to say even though I am not a big fan of profanity, mostly because, sometimes he is not only right but when he does write, he at least questions everything. And to me the most important quality we need to encourage in our children or even in our own minds is the ability to examine and question literally everything and anyone. Accept nothing at face value, and therein I come to my main point. The problem with Sandy is not that she refused to publish a comment of mine, I get the blogging thing – ‘your blog, your dime’, but that she refused categorically to step outside the lemming stream to even question any of the ‘governmental’ line. Its all well and good knowing as a taxpayer you are on the hook for a lawsuit and resenting it but at least ask yourself – “why?” rather than just blindly accepting or parroting whatever inadequate talking point the government offers.

Sandy and her ink of the ugly closed minds are a far greater threat than to our society (and pocket books) than any alleged fear of terrorist plot on Canadian soil.

One last thing, let me say again, this is why I never joined the Blogging Tories.

Alan at Gen X at 40 rightly notes – I have been commenting freely for years at his site…and he still lets me comment.

According to the Toronto Star Suaad Hagi Mohamud has launched a $2.5 million lawsuit.

A Toronto woman detained in Kenya for three months after officials doubted her identity is suing Ottawa for $2.5 million and demanding an independent inquiry. Suaad Hagi Mohamud, 31, endured a “Kafka-esque nightmare” when KLM airline and Kenyan government officials said on May 21 she did not look like the photograph in her Canadian passport.

Mohamud, whose ordeal included nine harrowing days in a Nairobi jail, said today that she “thought my government would back me up.” “I was alone when my government let me down,” she told a Queen’s Park news conference. It was only the tenacity of lawyer Raoul Boulakia and a series of stories by Toronto Star reporter John Goddard that enabled her to return home last Saturday to her 12-year-old son. “I don’t care about money. I’m only going to court so this will not happen to another Canadian,” she said.

Her new civil litigator, well-known lawyer Julian Falconer, said she deserves compensation and an explanation – through an independent public inquiry – for the “callous, incompetent, and reckless behaviour on the part of government officials.”

The proof of why she will be able to collect every penny can be found here, but more importantly; it illustrates why there is pressing need for an immediate independent public inquiry. Toronto Star:

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon knew as early as June 12 that Suaad Hagi Mohamud was in trouble in Kenya, the woman’s member of Parliament says. “I went over to Cannon and to Deepak Obhrai (Cannon’s parliamentary secretary for consular affairs),” Toronto Liberal MP Joe Volpe said yesterday, recalling the House of Commons encounter. Six days later, Volpe put the alarming facts of the case to Cannon in writing, with copies to Obhrai and the Canadian High Commission in Kenya.

In the letter, obtained by the Star, Volpe told how his constituent, on a visit, stood accused of not looking like her Canadian passport photo. The woman’s Toronto friends could not reach Canadian officials to vouch for her. The Canadians passed the woman to the Kenyans for prosecution as an “imposter.”

Marked “urgent,” Volpe’s letter asked: If the arrested woman is an “imposter,” where is the real Suaad Hagi Mohamud, the Toronto mother of a 12-year-old boy waiting for her to come home? Are the foreign affairs department and RCMP looking for her? Is she safe? Over four weeks, with the House no longer sitting, Volpe persisted with 20 emails, faxes and phone calls to Cannon and Obhrai.

In mid-July, when the file moved to the Canada Border Services Agency, Volpe started calling Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he hadn’t known about the trouble. “When we became aware of the case last week,” he said, “we asked our officials in various departments to give us some information.”

Yesterday Volpe said: “I can’t believe the Prime Minister didn’t know about this. If he didn’t, he should have the heads of two of his senior ministers on a platter.”

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lawrence Cannon, knew of Mohamud’s case on or shortly after June 12th but Mohamud was not allowed to return home in Canada until August 14th.

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan whose Canada Border Services Agency is currently ‘conducting’ the rug sweeping investigation of the Mohamud matter – knew of the matter by mid-July – and still Mohamud was not allowed to return to Canada until August 14th.

Forget this backdoor internal investigation nonsense Stephen Harper is promising as two of his cabinet ministers have much more culpability in this matter than the Prime Minister has led the Canadian public to initially believe. Besides, when it’s the taxpayers on the hook for $2.5 million settlement; the least we deserve to know is who said/did, what, when.

Oh, and for that Arab-Black racism thingie some tory stooges have been hanging their hats on – I don’t think it actually works to cover either Peter Van Loan or Lawrence Cannon’s butt.

Of the Canadian Border Services Agency which is running an internal investigation into the handling of the Suaad Hagi Mohamud citizenship matter ordered by the Prime Minister.

Well, let us all hope; it is not the same Canadian Border Services Agency which got duped by one of their ‘own’ for months, months and months.

The diplomat whose letter started the Kenya prosecution of Suaad Hagi Mohamud has been recalled to Ottawa and remains elusive – much like our Minister of Foreign Affairs. Toronto Star.

The Canadian diplomat who officially disowned Suaad Hagi Mohamud as an “imposter” has been recalled from Kenya. Liliane Khadour has “concluded” her posting, a consular official at the Canadian High Commission said yesterday from the capital, Nairobi. “Her tour of duty is over,” he said, explaining that Foreign Affairs employees rotate posts every two or three years, and Khadour had been in Nairobi for two. “I am not very sure where she went.”

Khadour is now in Ottawa. Although she owns a condominium apartment there with her partner, Jason Joyce, the two are staying at a downtown hotel. Both had been working at the commission in Nairobi as first secretaries. When reached by cellphone yesterday, Joyce hung up almost immediately. Neither answered the phone in their hotel room or returned messages.

The Canada Border Services Agency has opened an internal investigation into the handling of Mohamud’s case.

An internal investigation into the handling of Mohamud’s case by the Canada Border Services and the ‘rotation’ of Khadour out of the High Commission’s office in Kenya just doesn’t cut it.

Nothing less than a full-blown inquiry conducted under the public eye will do – especially given that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has so blatantly abdicated any sense of ‘ministerial responsibility’ for the departmental shenanigans which seem to so routinely occur. Too bad the Prime Minister cannot recall MP Lawrence Cannon – oh wait – he can but he will not. I suppose this is where Cannon’s Quebec roots triumph over ordinary concepts like competency or even basic decency.

I realize I am just one of approximately 36 million people in this country and my vote does not count for a whole heck of a lot. Good thing the Conservatives won’t be needing it in an election any time soon because unless I start seeing Cabinet Ministers taking full responsibility for the shenanigans operating in their departments on their watch and with a full public inquiry into the mysterious conduct of bureaucrats in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; I cannot support any Conservative government. Suaad Hagi Mohamud was not a ‘one off’ by any means - just google ‘Abdihakim Mohamed’.

I believe the Conservative Party deserves to feel a little of the same type of support Suaad Hagi Mohamud received from the Canadian High Commission via the voters. And know what – I am not the only conservative voter in this country who feels this way – not by a long shot.

The Prime Minister declares, “Our first priority is getting Mohamud home” – imagine how long it would take if it wasn’t ‘our First priority”? It could have taken months!
 
The Toronto Star:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said today the Canada Border Services Agency will have to answer for its role in the plight of a Canadian woman marooned in Kenya for nearly three months. “Our first priority as a government is obviously to see her get on a flight back to Canada,” Harper said in Kitchener today, referring to Suaad Hagi Mohamud, a Canadian citizen who was detained because Kenyan and Canadian officials there thought she did not look like her passport photo.

“In the case of the Canadian Border Service Agency,” Harper continued, “I know that minister (of public safety Peter) Van Loan is asking that organization for a full accounting of their actions in this case and we’ll obviously review those.”

Based on what officials at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi said were “conclusive investigations including an interview,” Mohamud was branded an “imposter.” Her passport was handed over to Kenyan officials for prosecution on charges of improper use of a travel document.  Harper said that Canadian officials are eager to resolve “what is not an easy case” and to get Mohamud back to Canada.

Harper doesn’t get a pass from me. Too little, too late, and furthermore, nothing could have been easier than to resolve this case months ago – if Canadian High Commission agents were on the ball and doing their job. I also harbour the sinking suspicion someone in the HC office might have been in on the ‘fix’ from the get-go.
 
In fact, a brief 15-20 minute interview, a web cam hook-up with a call to her employers in Toronto or her son, and then perhaps a Google search based on her answers of questions; like what route do you take to work, where do you buy your glasses, what shopping mall is closest to your home…all things readily verifiable with an internet connect and Google search. Mohamud produced more legal identification than I own, and if that isn’t acceptable proof of her citizenship and residency, well what is the point of having any? Nobody had to play CSI agent or a cop from Law & Order – just a little common sense and basic computer skills.
 
Harper tells us the Minister of Public Safety is to review the conduct of the Canadian Border Service Agency and is asking for a full accounting of their actions in this case and Harper will review it.
 
Not fracking good enough by a Canadian mile.

What is needed is a full public airing of the conduct of all agents of the Canadian government who had any exposure to this matter. The government has been cherry picking far too long and the High Commissions and Consulates seem to have forgotten they work for the people, all the people of Canada. Canadians need to know there will be accountability and sever consequences for violating the charter right of any Canadian citizen – anywhere, anytime and in any place by any agent of the Canadian government.

But there are a few interesting details come to light about this case and there is a larger issue that Canada must take action on. Firstly, this one – Toronto Star

It was the sort of holdup that has caused trouble for Toronto single mother Suaad Hagi Mohamud, “Many people have a very bad problem there,” says Hussein Adani, a former Somali track star and owner of New Bilan restaurant on Dundas St. E. Adani was returning from a two-month visit to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in 2000 when airport passport police stopped him. It was the sort of holdup that has caused trouble for Toronto single mother Suaad Hagi Mohamud, so desperate after two months of trying to prove she is the woman in her four-year-old passport photo, that she went to court to have Canadian consular officials take her DNA this week.

“They have two signs,” Adani said yesterday of the departure terminal at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. “One says ‘Africans,’ the other says ‘Europeans and North Americans,’ ” he recalled. “I am Canadian. I lined up at the second sign.” When airport police asked why he was in the wrong line, Adani showed his Canadian passport and a visitor’s visa issued by the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa. “They told me, ‘You will have a problem,’ ” he said. “They told me, ‘We’ll put you in jail, you will have to buy a new ticket tomorrow and your luggage will be gone.’ “I put $50 in my passport and gave it to the officer,” Adani said. “When they opened it and saw the money, they said, `Thank you.’”

At Nairobi airport, every Somali-born Torontonian knows to expect to pay a bribe, said outreach worker Maryan Ali at North York Community House. “They take only American money,” she said of the airport police. “They look at the date and ask for the newest, 2000 and up. It is well known.” Such incidents are on the rise, said Mahad Yousuf, director of Midaynta Community Services. “People are travelling back and forth and asking us for help.”

Calls to the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa went unreturned yesterday. In 2008, Transparency International said the chance of being asked for a bribe when dealing with Kenyan police was 93 per cent. To make matters worse, relations between native Kenyans and ethnic Somalis remain tense. Since 1991, Somali refugees have been pouring over Kenya’s northern border by the hundreds of thousands and an Islamist insurgency in Somalia threatens the entire region. As a result, ethnic Somalis in Kenya are treated with suspicion even at the Canadian High Commission, community leaders say. “The inadequate and sometimes casual attitude of the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi” exacerbates Kenya’s “well documented history of institutional corruption,” said Ebyan Farah, spokesperson for the Ottawa-based Canadian Somali Congress.

Now before we write off Kenya as the smelly armpit of Africa let’s get one thing straight. There is nothing ‘unCanadian’ about visiting one’s parents or family in Kenya nor is it realistic to expect to Somalian born Canadians to stop visiting their mothers in Kenya. But the government needs to develop a strategy in which the government of Kenya understands any shakedown of Canadian citizens by one of their agents comes with serious consequences. Kenya is a member of the World Trade Organization so we can start by laying complaints there as well at the UN. We can also begin establishing protocols for Somalian-Canadians to use to report any incidences shakedowns by Kenyan government agents, and submit such information to the Kenyan government to demand legal redress on their behalf. I am quite confident, if we started to sic the Canadian lawyers, currently on the government payroll on the problem, they will be able to establish an effective legal deterrent strategy.

More details have surfaced in the Saga of Suaad Mohamed:

In a telephone interview from Nairobi yesterday, Mohamud gave further details of the event that started her ordeal when she tried to board a KLM flight home on May 21 after a three-week visit to Kenya. A Kenyan KLM employee stopped her. “He told me he could make me miss my flight,” she said of the KLM worker, who suggested Mohamud didn’t look like her passport photo. He seemed to be soliciting a bribe, she said, an experience Somali-born Torontonians say is commonplace for them at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. When she didn’t pay, a Kenyan immigration official arrested her. Canadian consular officials went along, returning Mohamud to the Kenyans, who threw her in jail on charges of entering Kenya illegally on a passport not her own.

Let’s start with the possible solicitation/demand of a bribe by a Kenyan employee of the Dutch owned airline KLM, an employee who seem quite highly placed in the graces of Kenyan custom & border agents. Kickbacks aren’t just an old-fashioned ‘Fiberal’ fund raising tactic. KLM flies into Canada – perhaps its time to ask the CEO to conduct an investigation into the conduct of its Kenyan agents and/or employees and report directly back to the Prime Minister’s office with their findings. This is the kind of thing no intentional airline wants associated with their ‘brand’, and if for some strange reason that is not enough motivation for KLM; perhaps Canada needs to re-think KLM’s landing privileges in Canada. I am sure Emirates would be more than happy to pick up any KLM slack.

Canadians need for their government to take a firm consistent stand to the world that any citizen of Canada, whether Somalian, French or Iranian born Canadians, are not the world’s international bitches.

NB: One more thing. I have been highly critical of professional journalists in general but John Goddard has done a simply outstanding job on following this issue and and deserves praise, and I hope, a raise.