Despite numerous interviews, media write-ups, and multiple biographical sources, Ilhan Abdullahi Omar AKA “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi” remains an enigma. As strange as it sounds, there is almost no verifiable information about her nor her family in the public domain. This is bordering on the fantastic considering the fact that she is a ±34 year old (she has no birth certificate) sitting congresswoman. In an era where comprehensive digital background searches can be executed with a single mouse click, Omar’s fluid and ever shifting identity and invisible past are a puzzle.
The majority of the biographical information that she disclosed has multiple non-reconcilable versions. This includes significant inconsistencies about basic facts such as:
- Her family’s actual size
- Their real names
- The family wealth and real-estate ownership in the US and Somalia
- Their birth dates
- Details about her brother/husband’s identity
- Her father’s political role in the dictatorship of Said Berra
- Their residence in Baidoa and Mogadishu
- Any evidence that the family spent years in the Dadaab refugee camp instead of the resort city of Mombasa
- The real reason for their escape from Somalia
The problem with Omar’s exceptionally poor recollection of facts and propensity for embellishments isn’t limited to the period between 1990-2011. Just a few weeks ago, on May 28, Omar delivered the following speech in the Richfield high school about her first hand experience with a “sweet old African lady”:
“sweet, old . . . African American lady” who had been arrested for stealing a $2 loaf of bread to feed her “starving 5-year-old granddaughter.”
After spending the weekend in jail, the woman was led into the courtroom and fined $80—a penalty she couldn’t pay. I couldn’t control my emotions, because I couldn’t understand how a roomful of educated adults could do something so unjust.”
If you haven’t noticed, this plot-line suspiciously resembles Jean Valjean’s crime in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
As with most of her claims and recollections, this story too is unverifiable. She doesn’t remember where or when it took place, what court handled the case, or who the “sweet old. . . African American lady” was.
The fluidity of the Oma’rs background suggests that most of the details that we know about her have been engineered. It is also clear that over the past 27 years, core components of the Omar family dossier have gone through multiple revisions at the hands of someone who has a decent grasp of covert intelligence operations.
For example, between Ilhan, her father, current husband, and one of her sisters, they have 32 name variations that are being used interchangeably in various official registries.
Ilhan
Omar Ilhan
Ilhan Omar
Ilham Umar
Omar Ihan
Omar Ijhan
Ilham Omar
Ilham A Omar
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar
Father
Abdullahi O Mohamed
Nur Mohamed
Nur Omar Mohamed
Nur Said Elmi Mohamed
Current Husband
Ahmed A Hirsi
Ahmed Aden
Ahmed Hirsi
Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi
Ahmed A Aden
Ahmed Hrisri
Ahmed Hersi
Ahmed Haji
Ahmed Hassan
Sister (US Based)
Sahra Abdullahi Omar
Noor Sahra
Omar Sahra
Sahra Noor
Sahra Omar
Sahra A Omar
Sahra Abdullahi Omar
Sara Omar
Sarah Omar
Kadra Omar
Zahra
Ilhan’s perpetual reenactment of the comedy of errors of family name/identity mismatches is not an English as a second language issue. The same pattern appears when she communicates in her native Somali tongue. During her 2016 visit to Somalia and a meeting with president Mohamed Hassan Sheikh, she told the local media, in Somali, that the man by her side was her husband Ahmed Elmi. Running face recognition on the images taken by a Somali state media service photographer shows that the person accompanying her was in fact Ahmed Hirsi.
Image 2: Photographing Ilhan Omar and her husband Ahmed Hirsi visit with the Somali president. Images taken by a Somali state media service photographer.
As can be seen in Image 3, shortly after her marriage issue surfaced the photos in the article were deleted from the server. I contacted “Hassan Istiila”, the author of the article and asked him why he removed the images, he denied doing so himself (see email exchange in the references). The post edit history and server logs show that an admin user by the name of Farsamada AKA Liibaan Mohamoud Yusuf Nabiil was the one who removed the images from the WP CMS used by Radio Dalsan. It also turns out that Farsamada is a dedicated Ilhan Omar supporter/promoter in Somalia (see Image 5).
Image 3: The Mogadishu Radio Dalsan article about Ilhan Omar’s 2016 visit to Somalia and her meeting with the Somali president Mohamed Hassan Sheikh. The article identifies her husband as Ahmed Elmi but in fact it is Ahmed Hirsi.
Image 4: The Mogadishu Radio Dalsan 2016 article with some of the recovered images showing that the person accompanying Ilhan Omar was in fact Ahmed Hirsi traveling under the name Ahmed Elmi (Ilhan Omar only divorced Ahmed Elmi in 2017).
Image 5: Farsamada AKA Liibaan Mohamoud Yusuf Nabiil, the Somali news editor who purged Ilhan Omar’s images from the Mugadisu Radio Dalsan article that identified Ahmed Hirsi as Ahmed Elmi.
Omar’s 2011-2016 trips to Somalia also raise questions about potential FARA violations, her funding sources, and the actual purpose of her visit with the Somali president and local business leaders. From her itinerary it is clear that these were expensive state functions that took place years before Ilhan was elected to Congress. So who exactly paid for these visits? And why did the Somali president “requested her presence” at his villa? Unless, of course, Omar was there on a crypto-Elmi family financial/political expedition or as a private US/Somali power broker for promoting the interests of a Jihadi terrorist sponsors like Ahmed Nur Ali Jim’ale.
Another good illustration for this steady stream of name/identity shell game and biographical revisionism is her famous ‘militia assassination’ story. This tale which forms the foundation of Ilhan’s Somalia fairytale escape narrative (and likely the basis for the US asylum application) details a traumatic night in Mogadishu when her family’s secure compound was attacked by an unknown rebel militia who tried to “assassinate” her entire family.
The following are two versions of this story as told by Omar in 2016. The first version is from her interview with Cory Zurowski from CityPages News. The second version—which she told a month later—is from an Omar propaganda featurette that was produced by Daniel Cummings.
1. Ilhan Omar’s Improbable Journey from Refugee Camp to Minnesota Legislature
CityPages News – Published 26 October, 2016
“Nighttime fell as about 20 people milled about the compound in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. Bad noises outside announced unwelcome visitors. Men with big guns demanded to be let in. The group tried to bust down the front door, but it was unbreakable. Omar and her family fell to the floor moments before the militiamen let go a staccato of gunfire. Once they were satisfied with the evening’s damage, the attackers left.
Everyone survived. Omar hasn’t forgotten the sight of bullet pockmarks in the building’s cinderblock walls.
Shellshock turned to grief for Omar’s grandpa. “That was a hard realization for my grandfather, that our family was no longer welcome,” she says. “Even after the attack, he struggled with this new reality.”
Days later, they put their familiar world in the rearview mirror. They split into groups, 20 people in total fleeing. Omar’s headed for the coast where Abukar [grandfather] had connections. Alongside her father, she hopped a plane for Kenya.”
2. Ilhan Omar and The New American Dream
Movie Featurette – Published 15 November, 2016
[Go to 55:14 in the recording for the description below]
“Think my earliest memory of when the war actually felt real was waking up you know midnight… to militiaman surrounding our house. My aunt and older sister having a conversation through the window, sort of a negotiation with them because these were classmates of theirs, umm… and… and…and… negotiating them to sort of back down… and umm…and trying to break into our house and assassinate us.
We ended up surviving that night then my grandfather said that we like had to leave. We all left thinking that we’ll come back…that umm… you know in a few months the war would end, so we sort of fled I think like at 4 AM.
And walking through this… this…streets and actually, umm… walking over dead bodies and seeing debris and buildings that have fallen apart umm…sort of land marks of like hotels that you know, umm… that had movie theaters and all of this that we used to go by and… and… see that they no longer were standing tall…”
Both of these versions have major structural flaws. This includes discrepancies in the timeline, the sequence of events, the number of individuals involved, and the plot line. As can be seen from the table below, there are embellishment and missing elements in each version. For example, the claim that the militia opened fire at the house vs. that they retreated peacefully after the aunt and sister negotiated with them or that the militiaman were classmates of her aunt and or sister.
|
# |
Plotline Details |
Version 10/26/2016 |
Version 11/15/2016 |
|
1 |
20 men in the besieging militia |
Yes |
No |
|
2 |
Compound located in Mogadishu |
Yes |
Yes |
|
3 |
Militia located outside the compound |
Yes |
No |
|
4 |
Militia surrounded the compound |
No |
Yes |
|
5 |
Aunt & older sister talking to militia |
No |
Yes |
|
6 |
Militia members classmates of aunt &sister |
No |
Yes |
|
7 |
Men with big guns |
Yes |
No |
|
8 |
Trying to bust down the door |
Yes |
No |
|
9 |
Militia tried to assassinate them |
No |
Yes |
|
10 |
The House door was unbreakable |
Yes |
No |
|
11 |
Omar and her family fell to the ground |
Yes |
No |
|
12 |
Militia opened fire at the house |
Yes |
No |
|
13 |
Memory of bullet pockmarks on the wall |
Yes |
No |
|
14 |
Family not welcome in Somalia |
Yes |
No |
|
15 |
20 family members fleeing |
Yes |
No |
|
16 |
Catching a flight to Kenya |
Yes |
No |
|
17 |
Dead bodies & destroyed buildings |
No |
Yes |
|
18 |
Grandfather said we had to leave |
Yes |
Yes |
Table 1: A few variations in two versions of Ilhan Omar’s story about the Somali rebel militia storming the Omar compound in Mogadishu
Both versions of the story make little sense, especially the preposterous assertions Omar makes about the ‘magic door’ that could not be breached and how her family, consisting of 20 individuals (who weren’t connected to the brutal dictator Said Berra) managed on short notice to get hard currency, valid passports, visas, airline tickets, transportation to the airport, and a safe passage through multiple checkpoints controlled by Mohamed Farah Aideed’s militia to catch an international flight to Kenya.
Following this and many other Omar biographical dichotomies, I decided to examine her public statements regarding her family history. For any other US elected official, these types of gaping holes in a personal and family history would normally trigger a lynch mob of angry MSM investigative reporters. But as it has been already demonstrated, Congresswoman Omar seems to have managed to somehow acquire the ring of Gyges and will not answer questions on these subjects because she deems them too offensive and an invasion of her privacy.
Image 6: Two fake Somali refugees and their political affiliation with the regime of the Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre
So instead of hoping that someone will finally wake up and bring her in for questioning, I figured why not do the next best thing–take some of her video appearances and run them through a software based polygraph analysis.
The Evaluation Process
I wanted to conduct the evaluation in an impartial manner and eliminate the Christine Blasey Ford effect and the observer bias. To achieve this, I’ve only used movies of Omar that had her speaking clearly and audibly and featured a close-up view of her face at a sufficient resolution. This was important for facial feature extraction. I also automated the image optimization and evaluation process.
In assembling the virtual polygraph system, I used several AI tools to perform the speech and facial expression evaluation. For the facial and speech analytics I used:
- XRVision Sentinel AI – Face recognition, image reconstruction, & object detection
- Amazon Rekognition
- IBM Watson
For the speech analysis I used several algorithms to identify conversational dynamics and the detection of deceit through functions and patterns such as:
- Usage of filler words like “Umm”, “and”, “Like”
- Cut out contractions such as using “did not” rather than “didn’t“
- Increase/decrease in speech speed, pitch, and tone
- Pausing frequently
- Prolonging word vocalization (could be an indication of buying time)
- Repeating or rephrasing questions
- Stuttering
- Voice pitch changes
- Indications of distress
I calibrated the facial expression engine and established a baseline using several hours of Omar’s speeches on a variety of ‘neutral’ subjects. I then established her ‘truth’ baseline using factual statements (i.e. statement known to be true). I also supplemented her baseline facial expressions with catalogue of over 230 combinations of her customized Microexpression.
Following the creation of a unique database of her facial expressions, I proceeded with the ML training using her unique data sets. The whole training process took about 32 hours.
After the training was completed, I fed several movies into the engine and evaluated the accuracy of the system performance in terms of false detection and missed detection using a manual ground truth evaluation. During that evaluation, I examined several hundred individual video frames, correlating them to what Omar was saying and the AI detections of her face expression.
The results of the ground truth confirmed the accuracy of the training data and the precision of the speech and facial expression algorithms.
Image 7: Sample of the facial analysis results for one video frame out of about 120K frames analyzed.
Image 8: Sample of a few of the over 4000 frames analyzed from the ‘Militia Assassination’ sequence
Image 9: Sample of a few of Omar’s Microexpressions such as contempt
Image 10: Sample images showing rapid eye flickering and fidgeting (soothing behavior) correlated to the ‘Militia Assassination’ sequence
Image 11: Sample of an image that has gone through the optimization and enhancement process prior to using it in facial analysis
Analysis Results
The textual analysis shows that when Omar is talking about the gray parts of her biography her first person singular pronouns decrease, her negative emotion words increase, and her complex word choice decrease. This is most likely attributed to an increased cognitive overload that is associated with creative thinking. She also uses many more action verbs then average in these segments which suggests that she want’s to keep the story moving and discourage a challenge on the part of the listener.
The speech and facial sentiment analysis strongly suggests that Omar was deceitful when discussing her family Mogadishu history. She exhibited all of the typical facial and body mechanics indicators for dishonesty including:
- Stresses
- Evasiveness
- Contempt
- Nervousness
- Suspicion
- Fear
- Disgust
Omar’s analytic ‘lie’ score consistently exceeds her ‘truth’ baseline by 30%-80%. Her patterns also exhibit many indications of a compulsive fibber. She is a a great storyteller; her tales tend to be very detailed and colorful and she seems very animated. She is a natural performer, she is eloquent, and she knows how to successfully engage her audience. When providing historical information about her family, she never does so matter-of-factly (the way most people retell their family histories). Rather, Omar’s narrative is always custom packaged, epic, and geared at acquiring the listener’s admiration and sympathy.
The following are a few examples that suggest that she could be either a pathological liar or is working with well written PR scripts:
- She often talks about experiences and accomplishments in which she and her family play heroic parts
- She is often a victim (of physical violence) in her stories and is habitually looking for sympathy and protection
- She is always brave, virtuous, better then her adversaries, and beyond reproach
- Her stories tend to be very detailed but lack any verifiable data
- She responds elaborately and quickly to questions but her responses are always vague and almost never answer the question
- She has different versions of the same story and uses all of these versions at times
- Confirmed facts about her and family don’t support her version of the events
Omar habitually exhibits this pattern of evasiveness and embellishment in all of her narratives. For example, we know from multiple interviews that the count of her siblings changes and varies at any one time from 3-7. This begs the question of what her family’s real story is and why are they so reluctant to disclose it.
Omar is a naturalized US citizen with a very ambiguous/suspicious background that doesn’t seem to match her official biography. As a public figure and congresswoman, she has or will have access to sensitive and classified state secrets, as such, it may not be a bad idea for DHS and INS to run her record in order to eliminate any potential security breaches downstream. Anyone working for a three letter agency must go through a detailed background screening and a detailed character evaluation. Some even have to take periodic polygraph tests. There is no reason why a top lawmaker like Ilhan should be exempt. If her biographical details match her official story, then she should get the royal stamp of approval, If it doesn’t, then there should be full public disclosure of the discrepancies.
In 1995, when Ilhan was about 12, she finally got her wish and arrived to New York. While being driven to her new suburban home in Arlington Virginia she recalled the following memory:
“Staring out a car window, felt ripped off. This wasn’t the same country as the one showed to her on the INS orientation videos. Instead, it was a headache of car horns and homelessness, an eyesore of trash and graffiti.”
Image 13: Parts of the Hirsi Omar enterprise in Minnesota
Image 14: Ilhan Omar and Tim Mynett her strategist at a CAIR event hosted by Hassan Shibly, Ilhan holding hands with Mynett, dinning out with him, and spending the night together while she is still married to Ahmed Hersi.
Image 15: Ilhan Omar’s 2018-19 financial records showing over $250K in payments to Tim Mynett’s E Street Group LLC for his fundraising and ‘consulting’ services.
Image 16: March 23rd-24th 2019, Ilhan Omar (still married to Ahmed Hirsi ) and Tim Mynett holding hands and dinning at the Café Penguini Italian restaurant in Playa Del Ray.
Image 17: One of the image sources used to establish Ilhan Omar baseline of facial expressions associated with deceptive behavior. In this interview she denies her affair with Tim Nynett and separation from her husband Ahmed Hirsi (both have been confirmed as true)
Image 18: Ilhan Omar and her friend Hassan Shibly, the CAIR-Florida Chief Executive Director. Shibly is the one who wrote Ilhan’s speech at the CAIR fund raiser in LA where she stated that “Some people did something”. Shilby, senior CAIR executive (CAIR is a designated terrorist organization by the UAE) is also a habitual wife beater and is on the US Terror Watchlist.
From the size of the Omar financial enterprise, it seems that she was taking careful notes while watching the introduction INS movie about the freedom of religion and economic opportunities in America. Based on her sexual promiscuity It also looks like she has been binging on Dallas and Beverly Hills, 90210 style shows. It’s a shame, that she never got around to watch The Waltons.
References and Sourcing
Email exchange with Hassan Istiila
From: Hassan Istiila <hassanistiila200@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 04, 2019 5:54 AM
To: <Apelbaum>
Subject: Re: Question about one of your articles
Hey YA,
Thank you for reaching out, i left the Radio Dalsan a year ago so i don’t know why the images was being removed and i don’t have the images now.
Hassan Istiila
Former Editor, Former freelancer with News Agencies.
Blogger, social media trainer, media consultant, researcher and Human Rights Activist.
———————————————————————————————————————————–
On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 7:22 AM Y A <Apelbaum> wrote:
Hi Mr. Istiila,
I am writing an article on Ilhan Omar’s visits to Somalia in 2016 referencing your article below and was hoping that you can help me.
I’ve noticed that five images that came with the article were just recently removed. Would you be able to share these images? Also, any reason why you identified her husband in the article as Ahmed Elmi instead of Ahmed Hirsi?
Best regards,
YA
————————————————————————————————————————————–
وَيْلٌ لِّكُلِّ أَفَّاكٍ أَثِيمٍ
A fake refugee hatched out a plan
And perched on it like a crafty hen:
This self-righteous adulteress whore,
Has made profession of this chore.
A congresswoman on a hate crusade
Should carefully watch her vile tirade:
Appreciate the kindness done to you,
forget not you owe your life to a Jew.
No matter how crafty a liar is
Allah is mightier than she is:
He raises up the righteous to a bliss,
And brings deceivers to their knees.
Copyright 2019 Yaacov Apelbaum, All Rights Reserved.