TORONTO – Ottawa is preparing emergency travel documents to bring a Toronto woman marooned in Kenya home.
The move comes after her lawyer said a 99.9 per cent positive DNA test proves Suaad Hagi Mohamud’s identity. The Somali-born woman has been stuck in Nairobi for more than two months after she was told her lips did not match her passport photo when she tried to travel home.
Canada footed the $800 bill for the genetic testing which compared Mohamud’s DNA with that of her son.
A spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency says travel documents are being prepared for Mohamud.
The woman’s Toronto lawyer, Raoul Boulakia, had said he would bring a motion today asking the Federal Court to order the government to issue Mohamud an emergency passport to repatriate her back to Canada.
He says he hopes the Canadian government will ask Kenya to drop all charges against Mohamud, which include using another person’s passport and being in Kenya illegally.
The charges were laid as a result of the Canadian government saying Mohamud was not who her passport said she was.
Mohamud, 31, spent a month visiting her mother in Kenya and was on her way back to Canada when an officer stopped her at Nairobi airport May 21, saying she did not look like her four-year-old passport photo.
At the crux of the matter was the size of her lips.
After spending eight days in jail she was released on bail with no travel documents.
Canadian consular officials said she was an “impostor,” voided her passport and sent the case to Kenyan authorities for prosecution.
As Mohamud showed various pieces of ID, volunteered fingerprints and garnered the attention of media across the country, the Canadian government maintained their stance that she was not the citizen she claimed to be.
