#News A rumor is circulating in the Somali community claiming that Rep. Ilhan Omar is the biological daughter of former Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, and that her publicly identified father, Nur Said Elmi Mohammed, only took her in to secure fraudulent U.S. entry by posing as refugees from the Isaaq killings in Somaliland.
The claim has not been verified, and no official records prove that there is any credible basis for the claim.
The rumor comes from informal Somali-language social media posts about family names and relationships around the time of Nur’s de*th.
The allegation is that Nur Said Elmi Mohammed, described as a trusted comrade of Barre, secretly took her in.
Another post by GlobalMonitor shared a screenshot of a Somali-language comment thread that appears to question the relationship between “Ilhan Omar” and “Nuur Saciid Cilmi,” with people expressing confusion about names and whether certain people were related.
The language is informal speculation; it does not constitute evidence of Barre paternity.
Omar was born October 4, 1981, in Mogadishu, Somalia.
She has long said her mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, died when she was about two, and that she was raised by her father and grandfather.
The family fled Somalia around the start of the civil war in 1991 when the dictatorship regime her father served as colonel fell.
She pent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp and arrived in the United States in 1995.
Nur died in June 2020 in Minnesota at age 67.
Public records identify Nur as a senior officer who rose to colonel in the Somali National Army under Barre.
A 2020 Sahan Journal obituary described him as an esteemed senior officer.
Omar’s memoir called him an “educator.” However, Somali historian and Oxford researcher, Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, said that Nur
“was a full colonel in Siad Barre’s military regime,”
“was never an educator,” remained loyal until the regime fell in 1991, and
“misrepresented himself as a refugee.”
The regime k*lled 250,000 innocent civilians while Nur was a high-ranking official in the military.
Ingiriis said Nur was “part and parcel of those who caused (genocide) and created the civil war they ‘fled’ to live comfortably in the United States” and should not have received asylum.
U.S. immigration law bans refugee status for people who participated in persecution.
Barre committed widespread atrocities, including the systematic campaign against the Isaaq clan in the north with overall deaths as high as 250,000.
His regime was communist-aligned and Soviet-backed for much of its duration.
His documented children include Ayanle (described in recent reporting as a right-hand man who held significant influence) and Deka, both located in the Columbus, Ohio area, where some in the local Somali community have called for investigations of their presence given the regime’s history.
What do you think? Are the rumors true?
#ChristinaAguayoNews
