Ottawa is sending mixed messages about how soon it might help Suaad Hagi Mohamud return home from Africa.

On one hand, the Canada Border Services Agency said this morning it is working to issue the Toronto woman travel documents, tacitly admitting that Canadian authorities made a mistake in voiding her passport in Nairobi, Kenya, nearly three months ago.

On the other hand, no government politician has acted to get the woman home, instead leaving the federal court to sort out details.

"In terms of the federal position, I was told nothing," Mohamud's Toronto lawyer Raoul Boulakia said on emerging from a conference call with a federal lawyer and federal court judge just before noon today.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants every Canadian citizen the right to leave the country and return, he said.

"The Canadian government obstructed (Mohamud) from doing that by telling the Kenyan government to charge and prosecute her," Boulakia said.

What Ottawa must do now, he said, is issue her new travel papers, ask the Kenyan government to drop false charges against her of not being the rightful owner of a Canadian passport, and repatriate her — meaning put her on a flight to Toronto at government expense.

Boulakia is asking Ottawa in federal court to do just that.

Two more lawyers-and-judge meetings are scheduled before a scheduled formal court hearing on the matter Thursday, Boulakia said.

"All I know is this nightmare will be over," Mohamud said over a bad phone line from Nairobi, Kenya, when asked her feelings about Ottawa's statement that travel papers are being prepared.

"I'm glad it's finished."

There was no way to tell her of the court delays.

Definitive DNA tests exonerated the woman yesterday after Canadian authorities in Kenya stubbornly rejected her claims to Canadian citizenship.

Results show a 99.99 per cent match with her 12-year-old son Mohamed Hussein, who has been waiting for his mother since an airport official in Nairobi stopped her for not looking like her Canadian passport picture.

For every Canadian, Mohamud's ordeal raises the question: What proof of identity will Ottawa accept from a stranded citizen abroad?

On May 21, after a Kenyan airport official suggested that Mohamud's lips and eyeglasses were different from her four-year-old passport photo, the hapless traveller laid out all her ID at the Canadian high commission.

She displayed her Ontario driver's licence, OHIP card, social insurance card and Canadian citizenship certificate.

She showed her credit card, two bank cards, Shoppers Drug Mart "Optimum" card, Humber River Regional Hospital Card and a recent dry-cleaning receipt from Bright Cleaners on Lawrence Ave., W., near her Toronto address.

She produced a letter from her Toronto employer, ATS Courier, about a recent promotion.

The high commission rejected them all. Worse, instead of helping Mohamud, they sent her voided passport to Kenyan immigration authorities to help them prosecute her.

"We have carried out conclusive investigations including an interview and have confirmed that the person brought to (us) on suspicion of being an imposter is not the rightful holder of the aforementioned Canadian passport," Canadian vice-consul Liliane Khadour wrote to Kenyan immigration authorities on May 28.

Mohamud faced serious charges: being in Kenya illegally and using a passport not her own. The penalty would be either jail in Kenya or deportation to her native Somalia.

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On two occasions, federal officials in Canada appeared to suggest that Mohamud had switched identities with a sister. She has four half-sisters by the same father.

But the DNA results confirm Mohamud is not an aunt.

In statistical terms, she is 282 times more likely to be the boy's mother as an aunt, says a letter faxed to her lawyer from laboratory director Debra Davis of the Vancouver testing company Orchid Cellmark.

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