Canadian Suaad Mohamud has just arrived home in Toronto after being stranded in Kenya for three months, courtesy of the very people that should have been helping her. She'd been in Kenya for a two-week holiday, and was visiting her mother, but when she tried to leave, Canadian consular officials claimed she did not resemble her passport photo, so she must be an imposter. They voided the document, and then requested that Kenyan authorities prosecute her. Only after a DNA test that proved her identity was she allowed to return home.
Surely this could have been avoided.Considering that she had other documents to prove who she was, there really shouldn't have been a need for a DNA test. There are hundreds of other ways to prove someone's identity, and they can be done quickly and easily.
Of course, the officials that allowed this to happen just see a name on a piece of paper, and never really consider the emotional strain and anguish they cause for real people. Mohamud was separated from her 12-year-old son during those three months, so had his own ordeal to go through.
While it's important to have tight security at airports, it's also vital for immigration officials to consider that they're dealing with real people, and for countries to look after their citizens abroad. One of the problems with embassies is that they often employ locals to fairly influential positions, and in poorer countries this doesn't work, because many of them are totally corrupt. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but in my dealings with the British embassy in Zimbabwe, the only people I ever spoke to were Zimbabweans, and I'm fairly sure most of them were looking for a bribe.
I really hope Mohamud sues the shit out of the Canadian consulate, and that the officials involved are heavily demoted, if not fired. Frankly, they sound like a bunch of moronic arseholes, which, if my experience of such people is anything to go by, is pretty much the norm.
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