The Irish Scissor Sisters (19 page)

Det Sgt McDonnell contacted Interpol and asked them to run the names Farah Swaleh Noor and Sheilia Said Salim through their immigration records. They came back negative for both names. Interpol’s Dublin office then contacted their counterparts in London to see if Noor or Salim had any previous convictions. They subsequently received an email with the following message: ‘Please be advised that checks on Farah Swaleh Noor on our criminal, intelligence and immigration databases has also been negative. Lastly, all of the above subjects have been circulated to the PSNI for checks. These checks have also returned negative results.’

Despite these findings, which make it unclear if Farah had ever actually lived in London, it was obvious to Det Sgt McDonnell and the entire investigation team that Farah Swaleh Noor was not what he seemed. It was clear that the history of the victim deserved closer scrutiny.

Rome touched down at Dublin Airport on a bitterly cold morning on 30 December 1996. As the passengers disembarked, many looking forward to spending New Year’s Eve back in Ireland with their friends and family, one passenger faced an uncertain future. Sheilila Said Salim had turned thirty-one that year and had left his wife and three children back in Kenya to set himself up with a new life in Ireland, the land of the céad míle fáilte, a hundred-thousand welcomes. Sheilila had heard about the laxity of Ireland’s immigration laws. He was confident that if he could get into the country there would be little that the authorities could do to get him out again. The Irish economy had turned itself around from the terrible brain drain of the early 1990s when our great and good had to emigrate to Britain and America to find work. The country was beginning to prosper and the Celtic Tiger was in its infancy, a phenomenon that would soon bring previously-unthought-of prosperity to Ireland’s five million residents.

Sheilila Said Salim later claimed that he had paid $1,600 to a man who specialised in illegally transporting people into Europe. The man arranged for Salim to get on a flight from Mombasa in Kenya to Rome and on to Ireland. Salim had decided to change his name and hide his past once he got to Dublin. He presented himself to customs officials as Farah Swaleh Noor. He said he was a Somalian national, born on 2 July 1967. He told detectives from the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) that he had arrived from war-torn Somalia and was seeking political asylum. He carried no passport and few personal belongings and GNIB staff – who were well used to such claims by wannabe refugees – routinely processed Salim. He would have been interviewed and asked where he had come from and how he had managed to get into Ireland. GNIB staff would then have photographed and fingerprinted him. It was then arranged for him to be housed in temporary accommodation until a Department of Justice official could interview him. It was noted that Salim was approximately 5 ft 6" in height, of a thin, lean build with dark hair and black skin. Staff noticed a scar on his right wrist and on the back of his head.

Although Salim had decided to be dishonest with the authorities in Dublin Airport to try to get asylum in Ireland, his family back home in Mombasa missed him and wondered if they would ever see him again. As Det Sgt Gerry McDonnell later discovered, Salim had actually been born in Kenya in 1965, but as Farah he claimed he was almost two years younger. His father, Seyyid Salim, was a Somalian who was born in the mid-1940s. He had died in Mogadishu when Sheilila was a young man. His mother, known as Somoe Bakari Shigoo, a fifty-two-year-old Kenyan native, was still alive and living in Mombasa. Salim had one brother, Mohemedi Abuu, who was three years older than him and had emigrated to Toronto, Canada, in 1991. The young Salim had set up a life for himself in Kenya, marrying his wife Husna Mohamed Said, when she turned eighteen. They had three children together: Somoe, a girl, was born in 1989, Mohamed, his only son, came along the next year and Zuleh, the couple’s second daughter, was born in January 1991. Sheilila Said Salim did not have many friends in Kenya but was close to a cousin, Lulu Swaleh. As the years passed, Salim believed that there was no future for him in Kenya. He wanted to live in Europe. He told Husna that he would go to Europe and establish himself there, before flying his whole family over to start a new life. Secretly, however, Farah Noor as he later became, had no intention of ever seeing his wife and children again. He’d heard stories that some countries in Europe were soft touches when it came to refugees. If you turned up at a border and told a convincing sob story they would welcome you with open arms, give you free houses and cash in your pocket. You didn’t have to work and you could spend the days partying and hunting down women. This sounded like a sweet deal to Salim. He saved hard to come up with the $1,600 needed to smuggle him out of Africa and into a life of new and exciting opportunities.

When Salim arrived in Dublin seeking asylum, and while he was waiting to be assessed and processed by the Refugee Asylum Commission, he was sent to Tathony House in Dublin 8. At the time it was designated accommodation for asylum seekers. He spent a couple of nights there, before being transferred to the Brewery Hostel at 22-23 Thomas Street.

On 14 January 1997, Salim made his way into the Asylum Section of the Immigration and Citizenship Division of the Department of Justice at St Stephen’s Green to complete his application for refugee status. He filled out his name on the official form as Farah Swaleh Noor, born 2 July 1967, in Mogadishu, Somalia. He gave his nationality as Somalian, wrote that he was widowed and that his religion was Muslim. He claimed to be from the Bajun tribe and said that he spoke ‘Bajun, English, a little Arabic and Italian’. He gave his address in Somalia as PO Box 25, Shagari, Mogadishu, and he did not have any documents to prove his nationality. He claimed he had married his wife ‘Hajila’ in 1988 but that she was now dead. He gave the true details about his three children but he noted that he did not know where his children were now. He gave real names and addresses for his parents and said that his father was a businessman in Mogadishu, running a shop, and that his mother was a housewife.

Under the Education section of the application form he claimed that he had been privately educated between 1974 and 1978 but that he had gained no qualifications. He stated that he had worked as an assistant in his father’s shop for five years, until 1982, when he moved to live with his grandfather. He then got a job in the Italian Fisheries Department as a fisherman from 1982 until he left when the war started in 1991. When asked to explain why he had no identification or passport he wrote: ‘I had no time to get these documents before I had to flee from Somalia.’ He said he had left Somalia in May 1991 and travelled to Kenya. He claimed he had lived there until late 1996, in a refugee camp, until he gathered enough money to get him to Ireland. He told them he got a flight from Nairobi to Rome, where he then boarded a two-hour connecting flight to Dublin. It is likely that he didn’t stay in Rome because Italian immigration laws were far tighter and their system does not simply hand out free money to asylum seekers. Farah saw Ireland as a far nicer proposition. The only other possibility is that in reality Farah flew to Rome from London where he may have been living before he arrived in Ireland, seeking asylum.

Refugees are supposed to claim asylum in the first country they reach after fleeing their native land, usually because it is in the grip of civil war. Authorities around the world frown on people cherry-picking where they run to and asylum seekers must have a good reason to explain why they didn’t seek refuge in the first country they escaped to, in Farah’s case Kenya. His reason was: ‘Kenya is not a good country for a refugee. No food in camp. Giriyama tribe people do not like Somali people. Kenyan police do not like Somali people. Police steal from Somali people.’ On the application form he described his life in Kenya from 1991 to 1996, saying he: ‘Stayed in a refugee camp called the Wayoni camp in the Magongo region of Kenya. There was Bajun refugees mainly staying at this camp. Bad conditions, no water, nowhere to sleep.’

Farah claimed to have registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kenya when he was staying at the refugee camp. He denied that he had ever been in police custody or was a member of a political organisation or a trade union. Noor stated that he had a brother living in Toronto but that he wanted to stay in Ireland.

The final section of the Asylum Application Form enables those wanting to seek refuge in a country to give the reasons why this request should be granted. The following are Farah’s own words as they appear on his application:

‘My name is Farah Swaleh Noor. I was born in Somalia on 2-7-1967 in Mogadishu. My father and my mother they all Somali. I have one brother; I’m second born in my family. I used to be a fisherman in Kismayo. I was work with Fisheries Department. I start work from 1982-1990. From 1982-1990 there was no problem but from 1990 the war start to spread. So the war was worst, more than worst then I decided to go back to Mogadishu and see my family. When I reach Mogadishu I went to my family house. The door was open, when go inside nobody was in. The only thing I saw was the dead body of my wife, she was having a bullet in her chest. Then I start panic and I was afraid then I didn’t know what to do because the war was spread all over the country. Then I decided to take some few stuff. I start to walk towards Port Mogadishu when I arrive there I got a small boat to go back to Kismayo. When I reached Kismayo I saw a lot of people which they were leaving the country with a big boat. I rush there and I ask where’s the boat going. One of them tell me is going to Kenya. We spend three days to Mombasa, Kenya. We registered with UNHCR then they take us to the camp. I stay in the camp for five years. We face many problems at the camp. There were no doctors, no food, no water and overcrowding. There were many refugees from my country and also there were Kenyan people. They don’t like Somalia people to be in their country. Sometimes to come to camp night time and start to attack us and sometimes kill some refugees so I was afraid with that, also I was lucky to find agent. Then the agent ask me if I have 2000 US Dollars he can arrange me a trip to go abroad, then I told him I don’t have that amount but I have 1600 US dollars. Then the agent agree with me. I was very happy to leave the camp it was a terrible life at the camp. Before the war I was having a good life but the war affect me very much. It may be you refuse my application, I don’t know what to do because the war destroy my house and I don’t know where’s my family are they live or dead. No government to protect me. Even if is reach 20 yrs Somalia it will be never like before. The war affect my country as well. No hospital, no houses, no water, no animal, no light, no road and no food. So I will be very happy if you allow me to stay in this country.’

On June 2, 1998, Noor was interviewed, through an interpreter, by an officer from the Department of Justice. He said he had no information about the whereabouts of his wife and children because all his friends had fled Mogadishu as a result of the political situation there. He stressed that he had not wanted to leave Somalia but he’d had no choice. He said he then fled to Europe from Kenya because of the tough conditions at the refugee camp – when he got the chance to leave he took it.