what has the blue flag and zoomalis got to do with her case. they should all be wearing John Goddard and canadian t.shirts. give credit to where it is due. now the media made her a celebrity and the same media will bring her down. tall poppy syndrome. i hope she didn't have a sham divorce for welfare from her husband. they will dig all the dirt on her.
do u see a zoomali name in these people disgusted how she was treated
Aug 17, 2009 04:30 AM
I am absolutely disgusted by our government's treatment of Suaad Hagi Mohamud. On behalf of this country, I am delighted to give Mrs. Mohamud what she will not receive from this homophobic and racist government: an apology. I am sorry for your treatment as a less-than-first-class Canadian citizen and the trauma you and your family have been put through. This is the least that you deserve.
Robert Bruce Sims, Ottawa
So Stephen Harper now warns us all to be extra "cautious" when we travel internationally. Does that mean that Suaad should have taken "be cautious" to mean to pay out bribes when solicited? She did everything right and now Harper is trying to score political points by looking involved and blaming others. How sad. Kudos to the Star for relentlessly pursuing this story.
Rose LePage, Toronto
Now what about Amanda Lindhout? It seems this freelance journalist from Alberta, who has been held captive in Somalia since last August, has also been forgotten by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and his bungling aides in the High Commission. It makes me ashamed to be Canadian. Other countries send in armed troups to rescue their citizens. Canada confiscates their passports. Please do a story on Amanda's case. Maybe with all the heat on the subject, the government will respond.
Lesley Brownlee, Guelph
After the indifference and disgusting lack of assistance displayed by our government as a whole in the Suaad Hagi Mohamud case, I would expect them to have at least paid her fare home. She should also be compensated for all out of pocket expenses for the last three months, including any lost salary.
Robert Herscovitch, Toronto
I travel to foreign countries several times per year and am wondering what proof would be sufficient to satisfy Canadian and foreign officials. Clearly, from this case, our passport is not acceptable, nor are other citizenship documents. Apparently only DNA comparison is marginally acceptable. Where do I go to have my DNA taken and catalogued? And what is the standard bribe required at the airport in Kenya? I wish to be prepared.
Edward A. Collis, Burlington
When a staff reporter of a respected newspaper like the Star tried to contact Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan nine times on Aug. 14 without success, what chance does someone thousands of miles away in a foreign country have?
Max Desouza, Toronto
http://www.hiiraan.com/news2/2009/Aug/a ... tment.aspxStar Journalist John Goddard broke the story of Suaad Mohamud’s plight and relentlessly pursued it.
John Goddard
STAFF REPORTER
SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2009
With as much poise as anyone could muster, Suaad Hagi Mohamud walked a gauntlet of cameras toward her 12-year-old son at Pearson Airport's Terminal 3 yesterday, and warmly wrapped her arms around his head. Dignified and focused, her hair wrapped in a patterned red cloth, she laughed, broke into tears, answered questions above the din, and constantly kept returning attention to her son, kissing him and rubbing his head.
I recognized her as the Suaad I had come to know over the past seven weeks – a self-possessed woman constantly moving toward a positive outcome. Almost daily, over bad phone lines, she told me the latest on her excruciating, bureaucratic ordeal, starting with the size of her lips being questioned in her passport photo, to the taking of her DNA to settle her identity.
She never played the victim during the three months she was stranded in Nairobi. She never got angry or blamed anybody. When she expressed feeling, she made only statements that she knew to be true about herself.
"I'm here to be with my son," she told reporters yesterday. "I'm glad my whole nightmare is over."
Two days earlier in a similar vein, she told a reporter in Nairobi, Kenya: "I wish I knew why they did it ... I wouldn't have to keep asking myself."
At times, her Toronto friends say, she has broken down on the phone, particularly when asked about being thrown into a Kenyan jail for eight days, or speaking of her boy left behind with a friend's family.
But with me she always stayed fixed on the task at hand.
"I am suffering for nothing," she said at one point when she ran out of money and was evicted from a room in a Nairobi slum, perhaps her strongest expression of the injustice she felt.
And she ended every call with a cheerful, "Have a nice day."
Mohamud was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1978, making her 31 now. She remembers her childhood of the 1980s as a happy and relatively prosperous time. Her father was a businessman, she has said, with a swimming pool and a 2,000-hectare ranch at Afgooye, northwest of the capital, where her father would take her on school holidays.
When clan violence flared in the country, most of the family got out, first to neighbouring Djibouti, later to Kenya.
In 1996, at 18, she got married.
Asbscir Hussein was originally from Mogadishu, as well – from the same clan, and 11 years older.
He had come to Canada in 1989, obtained citizenship and returned to Africa to find a bride.
With Somalia still in turmoil, he looked in the expatriate Somali communities in Kenya. Their two families arranged the marriage.
A year or so afterward, he returned to Canada and began the process of sponsoring Mohamud to join him.
By the time he succeeded, in 1999, she had a toddler in tow, their only child.
But the match proved an awkward one.
Hussein drove a night taxi. Mohamud took a sewing course and beautician training, and nurtured ambitions to study fashion design.
In 2002, the couple divorced. But despite the break, throughout the ordeal, Hussein has staunchly supported her.
He filed an affidavit in federal court vouching for her. He spoke up for her to reporters. And when told he could help lab technicians match DNA between mother and son, he gamely let his cheek be swabbed.
"I feel so bad for her," he said emotionally while waiting at the lab office last month.
"She is suffering so much."
One of the greatest mysteries of the case is how immune the Canadian High Commission proved to be against her natural charm and obvious integrity.
When humanitarians from Ecoterra International in Nairobi heard of her plight, they checked her out and found her genuine.
When Toronto lawyer Raoul Boulakia read of her case in the Star, he ran a check and found the same.
Why the government wouldn't bother to make the same effort remains a puzzle, but at every new barrier Mohamud responded with typical resourcefulness.
Challenged by a Canadian consular official over her identity, she produced every form of ID she could think of, including a recent dry cleaning receipt from Brighten Cleaners near her Toronto home in Lawrence Heights.
When that went nowhere, she remembered she gave her fingerprints when she immigrated to Canada 10 years ago. "Take them again now," she asked consular officials.
Eventually, her attempts to prove herself led to one of her friends calling me.
The first story appeared July 1. With each additional report, the Star alone paying attention, Mohamud became more elaborate in her expressions of appreciation.
"When I get home, I'm going to give you a big hug," she said a few days ago.
In the crush of the airport crowd yesterday, we never even got a chance to say hello.
Source: The Toronto Star, August 16, 2009
This was my response to an accusation hurled on a subject like this a little bit ago
