Canadian Woman Allowed To Return Thanks To DNA Test

[saskganesh]

This wouldn't have happened if she was white.

I bet bad things sometimes happen to white people to.

absolutely. Canada is equal opportunity when it comes to abandoning our citizens overseas.

William Sampson was a small time bootlegger in Ridyah, but was detained and tortured because of fabricated terrorism connections. the Canadian government trusted the word of the Saudis and Sampson rotted for two and a half years in an Arabian jail.

And he deserved it.

no way in hell. deported for haram behaviour maybe, but not taking the rap for al-queda activities and then later swapped for 5 gitmo terrorists.

[Barrister]

That doesn't change the fact that this situation was a major embarrassment and the career of the person responsible should be over.

Okay, at risk of hijacking the thread, I hate how it has become the kneejerk reaction of people that when a mistake happens the person must be fired, or their career is over, or whatever.  Why should it be over?  Why should one mistake, even major, cut short a career that has been otherwise exemplary?

This is me probably talking out of my own experiences and feelings, but I have to make all kinds of very important decisions that effect people's lives in the course of my job.  I try really hard to make sure all of my decisions are based on evidence and not merely assumption, but I could see how it happens.

Why should the beauraucrat be fired over this mistake?  If he or shee is a career civil servant there's no other employer out there.

The matter allegedly reached the Ministerial level, so it isn't an issue of some lowly career bureaucrat making a mistake. The issue is whether it is a significant enough scandal for the Minister to resign.

That's a whole different matter.  And besides, a minister resigning has often been merely a temporary setback in some political careers, and not as Jacob put it "the career of the person responsible should be over."

[jimmy olsen]

Um yeah. Benefit of the doubt and all that legal shit.

If I'm in a country with a Canadian passport and the authorities in that country say it is forged, I would assume that Canadian Counsul officials will, at the very least, believe me over them. That would be a good starting point in my situation.

I disagree with that.  If an accused person tells me the sun rises in the east I always demand proof of that statement. 

Should this say the west? 

[Valmy]

You said she got screwed, then qualified it with a "that's the sort of thing you have to consider when you go to places like Kenya."  It's the second thing I object to.

I think you took that stronger than how I meant.  I did not mean that somehow she wasn't right for expecting the Canadian authorities not to screw her or that that she somehow deserved what she got.

All I meant that putting your life in the hands of your government is a risk that you have to consider when going abroad.

[Valmy]

Should this say the west? 

Um...if he said west that would not be much of a statement then wouldn't it?  Any logical person would deman proof if somebody claimed something obviously false.  He is saying he will demand proof even when something seems to be self-evidently true.

[Jacob]

To my mind there is no question that there has been a screw-up; the question is what motivated it. The article claims it was racism, pure and simple. I think it isn't so straightforward as that, but more likely to have been caused by the consulate in issue (and other consulates in similar circumstances) being bombarded with, and fatigued by, various fraudulent claims, making them slow to react to the genuine ones.

I'm not that interested in what caused it, beyond minimizing that something like this happens again.  I'm not jumping aboard any "it's because she's BLACK!" boats - maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but whether it was or not the situation is a disgrace.

Perhaps there are mitigating circumstances.  If so, we need to make sure those mitigating circumstances don't cause problems for other Canadians in the future.

[saskganesh]

Why should the beauraucrat be fired over this mistake?  If he or she is a career civil servant there's no other employer out there.

if a bureaucrat needs to be fired -- like if this was not just a mistake and actually reflective of something far deeper- they are entitled to the usual job loss protections.

careerism is not a defense.

[Jacob]

Why?  Now you've backed away from firing, but why "no prospect of promotion"?  So no matter what this person does over the next 10, 20 years they should never, ever be promoted?

I'm not saying nothing should happen, but why ruin someone's entire life because of a single mistake?  Especially a mistake not motivated by malice or ill will, but simply a poor decision honestly made?

Well, it depends really... if she shopped it up her chain of command and the inaction lies with someone else then that's fine.  But someone, somewhere in the chain made a bad call and there should be repercussions for that.  If that means the minister responsible has to resign, that's perfectly fine.  If instead some deputy minister decided to deprioritise it, then he or she can take the bullet or if the "lowly bureaucrat" somehow did fuck up then he or she should pay the price.  Someone fucked up and someone has to take responsibility for it, one way or another.

That said, I do find it pretty amusing to hear "hy ruin someone's entire life because of a single mistake" coming from you, given your usual attitude about mistakes and punishment

[Jacob]

The debate becomes that it appears this woman could and did prove her identity, and yet the officials continued to do little to nothing.

Yes, this is the crux of the disgrace, I agree.

And if they actually did have proper reasons to do what they did (or rather didn't) then okay, I'll back down.  But right now it seems like a disgraceful mistake was made.

[Jacob]

Should this say the west? 

You're pretty slow 

[Jacob]

All I meant that putting your life in the hands of your government is a risk that you have to consider when going abroad.

I still find that kind of offensive for those of us living in 1st world countries.  It should not be a risk you should have to consider, the government should just not fuck up like that; and if it does it's a scandal.  That said, the vehemence in my statements are directed at the government not you.

[Admiral Yi]

What's with the DNA test?  Couldn't find any mention in the two articles.

[Slargos]

What's even more hilarious is that he would probably be released in an instant if we simply turned off the foreign aid to those fuckers for even a day.

Signatures. Hah.

I'm sure the primary reason for the signature drive is to pressure your government rather than theirs.

Perhaps. It just seems convoluted to hand over the signatures to the Eritrean embassy then.

[Josephus]

What's with the DNA test?  Couldn't find any mention in the two articles.

Yeah, that was the day before's news. Here: (full story source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/08/10/kenya-canadian-dna.html


The lawyer for a Canadian woman stranded in Kenya said he will file a motion in Federal Court on Tuesday, asking the federal government to issue an emergency passport so she can return home after a DNA test confirmed her identity.

Raoul Boulakia, the lawyer for Suaad Haji Mohamud, said he received the genetic test report on Monday afternoon, and it proves that she is the mother of a 12-year-old boy living in Toronto, confirming who she says she is.

"The DNA test says that it's 99.99 per cent established that she is the mother of her child, Mohamed," he told CBC News.

[Admiral Yi]

Thanks Josephus.  How do we know the child's mother is a Canadian citizen?