'In harm's way': Canadian children fleeing war stranded in Kenya after passport dispute

For the past few months, Hassan Mursal's daughters have been on the run.

Now, the Edmonton father is fighting to bring his children to Canada after they fled a war zone in Ethiopia, but a bizarre foul-up in one daughter's passport application is making it difficult.

Mursal says he fears for the safety of his daughters — Saabiriin, 14, and Zuhur, 9 — who are stranded in Nairobi after recently fleeing the war-torn Ethiopian region where they had been living.

Mursal has been trying to replace his older daughter's Canadian passport, the processing of which was unsuccessful due to a disputed photo.

"The situation is very bad now for them," said Mursal in an interview with CBC News Wednesday. "The kids have no parent over there."

Although the girls are Canadian citizens like their father, they've never lived in Canada. Mursal, came as a refugee from Ethiopia to Canada in 1988. He married an Ethiopian woman during one of his many prolonged visits back to his homeland.

Two weeks after the birth of their second daughter in 2009, Mursal's wife died from a heart attack. The sisters were left in the care of their aunt so that Mursal, who drove a taxi in Fort McMurray, could continue to work and provide for them.

In 2015, Mursal applied for a replacement passport — the passport for his older daughter had gotten lost, he says — in the hopes of bringing both daughters to Canada. Their aunt had just died and protests in the region were turning deadly.

"Sometimes you see dead bodies on the road and sometimes, like two or three weeks, you can't come out from the home," Mursal said, recalling details of his time spent in Ethiopia during that period.

Late last year, Mursal's daughters were among thousands of people who fled the region amid prolonged violence and deadly clashes that escalated following October's presidential election.

An Edmonton human rights group that has taken up his case met with staff from the office of Edmonton federal cabinet minister Amarjeet Sohi earlier this week.

Mark Cherrington, a volunteer with the Coalition of Human Rights and Justice, is concerned about response from the Canadian government.

"We have a situation where we have two small children, Canadian children, that are in harm's way, that were in a war zone and fled this war zone," said Cherrington.

"We're asking that the Canadian government act intrusively and quickly and make sure that these two children are kept safe and returned home to Canada with their father."

The wellbeing of the children should be made the priority regardless of the issue with the passport photo, Cherrington added.

Impostor photo

The issue with the disputed photo on the passport application is that the photo is not Mursal's daughter — a troubling situation that isn't able to be definitely explained.

Officials with Immigration, Refugee Citizenship Canada (IRCC) say the "impostor" photo was submitted fraudulently. Mursal vehemently denies the allegation.

Mursal learned about the problem in a letter from the Passport Investigations Division on Dec. 20, 2016 —one of many documents he provided to CBC, including copies of his daughters' expired Canadian passports.

The letter, signed by an investigator who provided an unreadable signature and no name, acknowledges his custodial duty as the only surviving parent. It also references the police report of his daughter's lost passport.

However, it also informs Mursal he is under investigation for allegedly "providing false or misleading information in support of the application submitted in the name of Saabiriin Hassan Mursal."

The document explained that facial recognition software that compared the photo to a previous passport photo of Saabiriin showed "a minimal resemblance."

Further, Canadian government officials told CBC News that embassy staff said Mursal was accompanied by the impostor when he initially made the application at the Canadian embassy in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.

Mursal said that is not the case and he was with his daughter that day.

He acknowledges the woman in the photo is not his daughter, but insists it is not the photo he submitted.

"I have never seen that picture," Mursal said.

Revenge?

Mursal suggested the photo was switched, perhaps in response to his request to speak to someone higher up, a request that he believes may have offended a staff member.

"He is the one who replaced another photo in my daughter's application due to what I was asking for," Mursal wrote in a letter on Feb. 2, 2017, in response to the allegations.

Mursal denied knowing the person in the other photo and described it as an act of "revenge." "I swear that I submitted my daughter's real photo," he wrote.

Mursal alleged he was indirectly asked to pay a bribe, which he refused to do.

But IRCC stood firm and informed him in January 2018 that his passport privileges were revoked until 2022.

Mursal says he sent to the Canadian Embassy in Addis Ababa on May 30, 2018 an application for a limited "travel document in special circumstances under urgent, compelling and compassionate" grounds. He said his children hadn't been able to attend school in months.

But in July, Mursal travelled back to Edmonton alone on an emergency travel document to plead his case on Canadian soil. He said he was told the document he travelled on could not be issued for his daughters.

"We are alarmed at how the response has been by the Canadian government to make sure that these Canadian children are returned home safely and kept safe in the interim," said Cherrington.

Cherrington called for an investigation into the allegations against embassy officials but IRCC said it has confidence in the integrity and professionalism of its employees. Cherrington said Sohi's office has been helpful. They declined comment.

Global Affairs, which provides emergency assistance to Canadians overseas, has not provided comment.

andrea.huncar@cbc.ca @andreahuncar