Sunday December 1, 2024
By Paula Penfold
A decade after he entered a woman’s bedroom in the dark of night and sexually violated her, leaving her with an STD and him with her laptop and other things he stole, Mohammed Abdiwali has lost his refugee status. Not because of his lengthy and serious criminal history, but because it’s been deemed he’s no longer at risk in Somalia. So will he be deported? His case seems to tick a lot of boxes, including serious questions over the basis on which he was granted refugee status in the first place, such as the initial claim that his mother was dead. But in trying to unravel the case, journalist Paula Penfold found herself in a video call with a woman in Mogadishu who says she is his mother, and is alive and well. Here’s the story of the life and crimes of Mohammed Abdiwali, and a system that doesn’t seem to know what to do with him.
On September 2, 2003 12-year-old Mohammed Abdiwali arrived in New Zealand with members of his extended family, from Somalia.
His immigration papers record his father as having been killed a year earlier, his mother dying more than a decade prior to that, soon after giving birth to her only son. He’d been adopted by his grandfather, the papers say, and was living in a refugee camp in Kenya.
New Zealand accepted Abdiwali for resettlement under the Refugee Quota system.
Six years later, Abdiwali’s offending began: small crimes, at first — driving without a licence, shoplifting, disorderly behaviour.
But by 2014 his offending had escalated drastically. He violated a sleeping woman in Te Puke, saying at the time he did it because he believed he would be deported if he committed a serious crime.
He wasn’t. But in the judge’s sentencing notes comes the first recorded indication of concern about Abdiwali’s “immigration matters”.
“The information available suggests that the whole basis upon which you entered New Zealand may require to be reconsidered and that, it seems, is highly likely to occur at the point of which you will be eligible for release.”
He sentenced Abdiwali to five years and nine months’ jail, ordering the entire term must be served. “You are clearly, at the moment, somebody from whom the community needs protection.”
But on his release from prison there was no reconsideration of Abdiwali’s refugee status, as the judge had suggested ought to be the case.
Instead, Abdiwali repeatedly breached his release conditions, leading to further imprisonments.
And then in 2020 he sexually violated a second woman, this time in Palmerston North. Another two years and eight months behind bars.
Given that history, earlier this year Corrections applied for an Extended Supervision Order (ESO), designed to protect the community from offenders who pose a “real and ongoing risk” of committing serious sexual offenders.A judge declined that application. Abdiwali continued to breach his release conditions, in an endless cycle of jail and bail, telling Stuff earlier this month that with nowhere permanent to live, “I’m meant to be a monster and I’m f…ing roaming around”.
With a rap sheet totalling around 50 convictions.
In a series of interviews, Abdiwali returns repeatedly to two things.
First, his remorse over his crimes, particularly the sexual violations.
“I’m very ashamed of my behaviour and the hurt and the pain that I caused. I’m very sad that I hurt two women.”
And second, his desperation to be repatriated to Somalia.
Normally refugee status cannot be reported but Abdiwali gave Stuff a confidentiality waiver because he wants it publicly known that, in his view, he shouldn’t be here — that he should never have been given refugee status.
In the immigration documents granting Abdiwali residence under the Refugee Quota Programme, there are numerous references to his mother being deceased.
So it’s intriguing when my video messenger app lights up: Mohammed Abdiwali is on one screen, from Wellington, while beaming in from Mogadishu, Somalia, looking the picture of health, a woman he says — and she confirms — is his mother, Deeqa Diiriye Ahmed.
“See the features? Same on our faces,” Abdiwali says. He’s right, they do look like mother and son.
They offer to provide DNA proof also, though there seems a much more fundamental reason why what they’re saying might be true: why would any woman claim as her own a man who has sexually violated two women in another country?
The woman who says she is Mohammed Abdiwali's mother, Deeqa Diiriye Ahmed.
What happened, then? How did 12-year-old Mohammed Abdiwali end up 14000km away in a country he describes in almost every conversation as “a f…ing shithole”. And why is his mother recorded as dead when — if this woman is indeed his mother — she’s very much alive?
It takes a bit to unravel, but through the interviews with Abdiwali, this conversation with Ahmed in Mogadishu, and in those hundreds of pages of his immigration file, the whole tale becomes somewhat clearer, though there are still many gaps.
Abdiwali was born in 1991 in Hamar, where Ahmed still lives.
“There was a war happening at the time that I was born,” he says. “So you can tell how my life is shaped out, from a young age. I was a troubled kid and I was born into trouble.”
I ask Ahmed what she can explain about how her son ended up coming to New Zealand.
He translates. (Stuff has had a Somali speaker review the conversation for accuracy.)
“My mum says when I was a kid they [family] took me away thinking I was going to meet my father and my dad’s side in Kenya.”
It was 2003. An Amnesty International report from that year details how hundreds of civilians were killed in faction fighting throughout the country. Faction-linked militias were also responsible for kidnappings and rape. There were no effective national or regional laws.
So Ahmed claims that she agreed Mohammed could be looked after by his father “for a short time”.
“Her intention was that I was going to get to know my dad, for a little while, and then come back. But [the adults] that brought me here, just brought me here.”
How come she is listed as being deceased on Abdiwali’s immigration papers?
“They brought me in this country as a fraud,” Abdiwali translates. “She did not know what had happened to me.
“She thought I was dead,” he says. “She was hurt because I was her only child.”
An only child who grew up and committed serious crimes.
Does she know what he’s been convicted of in New Zealand?
“She’s aware of why I offended, and the way I offended. It was for attention of me going back home,” Abdiwali translates. “And she’s not proud of it, the way I went about it. And I’m not proud of the way I went about it.”
Earlier this month, when Stuff reported Abdiwali was choosing between living on the streets or with meth-addicted friends, a habit he was trying to break, we also put to Immigration New Zealand his concerns about the veracity of his documentation, including the fact of his apparently alive mother.
Back then, INZ said his case was “incredibly complex”.
It did not answer the question about his mother, but did say that “because of the unique circumstances … it is unlikely he would meet the threshold for cancellation of refugee status”.
The head of the Refugee Status Unit, Grieg Young, said however that INZ can decide to cease someone’s refugee status if their circumstances have evolved to the point where they’re no longer in danger under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
“INZ also has the option to deport an individual under Article 33 of the Convention if an individual poses a threat to the community or national security."
Article 33 specifies that a refugee who has been convicted of a “particularly serious crime” may be returned to their home country.
The Convention also sets out that a person’s refugee status can be cancelled if it may have been obtained by fraud, forgery, or false information.
INZ said Abdiwali’s case would “take time to consider”.
Ten days later, Abdiwali got a letter from the Refugee Status Unit with an apparent change of heart: it had decided there are no longer grounds for him to keep his refugee status.
INZ confirmed to Stuff that, “Therefore, this has been ceased and he no longer has refugee status in New Zealand.”
But, again seemingly at odds with its previous statement to Stuff, it added, “There are currently no grounds to deport Mr Abdiwali under the Immigration Act”.
I seek clarification, but INZ simply repeats that Abdiwali “does not appear to currently be liable for deportation under any section of the Act”.
So what about Article 33? INZ had already concluded back in October, in documents seen by Stuff, that Abdiwali had, “it appears … committed a particularly serious crime”.
There’s also the matter of the fraud allegations over the immigration documents.
Professor Kris Gledhill from AUT law school can’t comment on Abdiwali’s specific case, but says “the legal provisions are fairly complex for a decent reason: people who have refugee status are invariably subject to significant risks if deported and so it is necessary to have processes in place to make sure that the right decision is to deport”.
He says on the question of false information, “there’s a complexity if the false information was not provided by the relevant person because they were a child and so they cannot properly be blamed for that”.
Gledhill says the criminal convictions can also lead to deportation, but again there are restrictions.
“Article 33 requires that there is a danger to the community. If someone doesn’t meet the test for an ESO, or wasn’t sentenced to preventive detention for their offending, there might be an argument that this dangerousness test isn’t met.
“In any event, there has to be a process followed with the decision being made and the person offered the right to appeal.”
To the survivor of his second sexual violation, the process should be cleaner and faster.
She’s careful with her wording and stresses she does not want people to use his case to generalise about refugees.
But, still dealing with PTSD from her attack, she finds the current dead end difficult to understand.
“I’ve seen lots of people deported for much less.
‘It’s in everybody’s interests — it’s in New Zealand’s interests — that he’s gone.”
After all, aside from Immigration, it’s a long list of government departments that have had to deal with Abdiwali: Police, Justice, Corrections, MSD, at an inestimable cost.
In the video call, I ask Ahmed what she wants for Abdiwali now.
“She wishes for me to be back at home with my loved ones … and have a decent life, and eat meals together, and have a happy life.”
Part of the reason refugee status was granted in the first place was because he was deemed unsafe in Somalia. Is he safe there now?
“She said where we are is very peaceful. They’re willing to have me back at home,” Abdiwali translates.
Can they afford to pay to get him there, since, having spent so much time in custody, he has no money himself?
He won’t put that question to her.
“I don’t want my family back home to run around, whatever they got, for me to have that. They should not be in that position.”
As our conversation draws to a close Ahmed’s tone changes, as if she’s forgotten I”m there.
“You’re an adult person now,” she says to him, brow furrowed. “You need to get yourself together.”
But on Friday Abdiwali video-called Stuff to say that after testing positive for drugs again he’d reappeared in court, and had been unable to access the drug counselling successive judges have recommended.
“I’m trying to make the right journey for me to go back home. I’m trying to make the right steps with Immigration.
“But I can’t get the help that I need. I feel like giving up.”