He was 'nobody's child,' escaping war-torn Somalia only to be sent back after a life of crime in Canada
Hussein Jilaow was born in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, on Nov. 23, 1980. The stately port city was once the centre of east African trade, but in 1990, rebel militias took power there in a violent uprising, forcing out long-time dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, and plunging the country into a gruesome civil war. In the summer of 1992, when he was 11, Hussein witnessed his father killed by sniper fire in the war-ravaged city, and fled Somalia for the U.S. with several members of his Marehan clan, a small tribe allied with the ousted regime. He arrived at the Niagara Falls border crossing in September 1994 and was granted refugee status in Canada. He did not know the whereabouts of his mother or his five siblings. In Canada, he followed members of his clan to Winnipeg, home to a growing east African community.
"He was nobody's child," says Ali Saeed, who owns the west end Yenat Ethiopian Restaurant. One night in 1995, Winnipeg Child and Family Services phoned Ali, who'd founded the Ethiopian Society of Winnipeg; they'd found Hussein downtown, and suspected he might be Ethiopian. "I tried speaking Ethiopian, but he didn't answer," says Ali, who drove to the division offices to try to help. "So I tried Arabic. He said: 'No, Somali, Somali.' " At this, Ali brought in his wife, Ayni; she was raised in the Somali-border region of eastern Ethiopia, and spoke the language fluently. Hussein smiled, and relaxed when he heard his native tongue. That night, the Saeeds brought him to their North End home, where, for three years, he lived "like an older brother" to their three children.
Hussein enrolled in junior high at nearby John Pritchard School, but floundered; he had a Grade 3-level education, and spoke no English. A former teacher remembers a "nice" but "obviously troubled" boy. He had constant nightmares that sometimes woke him, screaming. "In the middle of the night, he would get up from bed, and sit by himself," says Ali. "He was raised in the war. He saw dead bodies in the streets."
At 17, Hussein left the Saeeds and dropped out of Daniel McIntyre Collegiate, drifting to Winnipeg's Mad Cowz gang, largely comprised of immigrant and displaced youth. He became a drug runner -- a life punctuated by repeated arrests, some for violent offences. In 1998, Hussein -- known on the street and to city police as L.J. -- had a son, named Mohamed. For a time, he worked at a west end bakery, but was let go after a scrape with the law. By then, he was using and selling crack cocaine, explains Yassim Ibrahim, alleged boss of the Mad Cowz. His girlfriend Ivy left him, barring access to Mohamed, whom he last saw in 2001. The gang was "family," says Yassim.
Homeless by 19, Hussein would sometimes sleep near the west end 7-11 convenience store on Ellice Avenue. When it was cold, he stayed up all night, wandering the empty downtown, sometimes stopping for coffee at Mac's, says Mayen Madit, a Mad Cowz associate and Hussein's former cellmate at Manitoba's Headingley Correctional Centre. "People come to Canada to get away from war," says Mayen, a Sudanese refugee who immigrated from a Nairobi refugee camp at age 15. "But they need money for clothes, shoes -- for rent. Some people have to go to the street."
At 19, Hussein was handed his first jail sentence. By the time he was 25, he had racked up 13 convictions -- most recently for uttering threats to prison guards at the downtown remand centre after a fight -- and was subject to deportation. "Mr. Jilaow does not come to the Court with clean hands," wrote a federal judge in February, in deciding his case. "However that is no reason to send [him] to a place where those hands may be chopped off." Hussein's clan status put him at grave risk in Mogadishu, in southern Somalia, where his tribe is in hiding, and would bar him from landing in the north. The Canada Border Services Agency overturned the judge's decision: "The interests of Canadian society outweigh Mr. Jilaow's presence in Canada and any minimal risk that he might incur if returned to Somalia," it ruled.
To Ali, the decision was akin to throwing Hussein to the wolves. Government is effectively absent from Somalia, where a mishmash of warlords, rival clans and Islamist rebels fight for control -- a war and humanitarian crisis on par with Darfur. "He kept saying, 'If I go back, I'm going to get killed,'" says Mayen. "I told him to man up, to face his fate."
On May 22, Hussein was flown to Somalia on a private jet. He had $300 -- saved over four years -- hidden in his shoe. This fall, he was reported dead. He was 26.
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