Holloway refugee mother’s plea to be reunited with last son left in Somalia

Islington Gazette
Thursday, June 21, 2012
by Tom Marshall

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The son of a mother-of-five who fled a war-torn country was murdered just months after the government refused to let him join his family in the UK.

Halima Mohammed’s son Adan was pulled out of a car and shot dead in Somalia last November, just four months after the latest application to bring him to safety was rejected.

Now Mrs Mohammed, a British citizen, is appealing to the people of Islington to help her get reunited with her last child left in the chaotic country before it is too late for him too.

Dreadful

The 48-year-old, of Cornelia Street, Holloway, told the Gazette yesterday: “Adan was in a car with two other boys. They were stopped by men who shot him in the head and the chest and killed all three of them.

“Now when any telephone rings I always think it is somebody calling to tell me my other son Lilvan is killed.”

The country has been in civil war since the 1990s and Mrs Mohammed came to Islington with her two youngest sons in 2000. Mohamed, now 16, and Abdullahi, 14, go to Highbury Grove School in Highbury Grove, Highbury. They were joined by sister Sahra, 20, in 2010.

Mrs Mohammed also lost her husband, who looked after the other children back in their homeland, in 2003 when he disappeared off the face of the earth. Her remaining son Lilvan, now 24, and orphaned half brother Hasan, 19, live under a tree in Somalia.

For more than a decade she has been trying to convince the authorities her family are unsafe, spending thousands in legal costs.

Emily Thornberry, MP for Islington South and Finsbury, has been working with Mrs Mohammed since 2005 and wrote to Theresa May about her case in December. She said: “It’s the most dreadful story and any mother’s heart would go out to Halima. All that time she was saying her children were not safe and if only she’d been believed, that boy would be alive now. We need to do everything to help.”

She needs money to lodge another application to get them all to the UK and Ms Thornberry is trying to raise £3,500 – before time runs out. To help, call her office on 020 7697 9307 or make a bank transfer to 65545267, sort code 08-92-99.

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