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Nur Omar Mohamed, the father of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), is described in the Congresswoman’s 2020 memoir as an “educator.” However, his own obituary, published in June 2020, describes him as a colonel in the army of the Somali dictator Siad Barre.
Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, passed away from COVID-19 complications in June 2020. The Sahan Journal, a nonprofit news organization in Minneapolis, reported on the passing of Ilhan’s father. In the obituary, it was written that Nur Omar Mohamed was an “esteemed senior officer in the Somali National Army” and led a regiment of soldiers in the 1977-78 war between Somalia and Ethiopia. His military career ended in 1991 after the fall of dictator Siad Barre. A fellow former colonel in the Somali Army, Yusuf Ismail Faraton, told the paper that Ilhan’s father “played a significant role” in the war. Although Ilhan Omar wrote in her memoir that her father was an “educator”, the obituary referred to him as a colonel.
According to a report in the New York Post this month, Oxford University researcher Mohamed Haji Ingiriis says that Ilhan Omar’s father was “never an educator,” as she wrote in her 2020 memoir, but a military officer who was “loyal to the regime until the end.” The soldier, Nur Omar Mohamed, had “misrepresented himself as a refugee” to the US, the report added. A retired officer who said he served in the same regiment as Mr. Omar described him as a “feared” colonel and said “some people were scared of him.” Omar’s representatives declined to comment to the Post.
There are no definitive sources on what Nur Omar did between the Ethiopian war, which ended in 1978, and the fall of Siad Barre’s regime in 1991. While it is possible that Nur Omar committed war crimes during this time, evidence is hard to verify. For example, the regime of Siad Barre perpetrated a campaign of violence against the Isaaq clan in northern Somalia during this period, which included acts of genocide as reported by a 1990 Human Rights Watch. But while there are claims by critics that Nur Omar was involved in executing people or even planning their massacres, these are allegations that have not been proven by any court or investigator.
This matters for another reason: how Omar’s family came to the US as refugees. US law bars refugee status for anyone who has persecuted others. The Post reports that investigators are also looking into whether Ilhan Omar or her father misstated her date of birth for immigration purposes, in order to derive citizenship through her father’s naturalization as a citizen in 2000.
It is just one part of the wider investigation into Rep. Omar. Federal agents searched her Washington home on October 12, and more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas have been issued, the Associated Press reported. The New York Post reported that prosecutors are planning to use DNA evidence to determine whether Omar’s 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was to her brother. Omar has denied the claim since 2016. There are as yet no charges against the Congresswoman and the Justice Department has not confirmed that any DNA evidence exists.
Omar called the search an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” and her attorneys say there is “no legitimate basis for any suggestion that she has violated any law concerning her citizenship status.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, speaking on the Charlie Kirk Show on October 16, said, “We had a judge sign it, and we expect to be able to take the case to a grand jury.” Border czar Tom Homan said in a separate interview that the government had built “a strong case” that could result in the administration’s attempt to denaturalize Omar.
