Somali Community Leader: Yes, Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother To Keep Him in US

A new report adds weight to allegations that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota married her own brother.

The report in the U.K. Daily Mail quoted a man named Abdihakim Osman as saying that Omar had been desperate to find a way to keep her brother Ahmed Elmi in the country.

“No one knew there had been a wedding until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later,” Osman, 40, who keeps tabs on the Somali community around Minneapolis through a Facebook blog, said. Omar has called criticism of her marriage “Islamophobia.”

Omar married Ahmed Hirsi in 2002 in a Muslim ceremony which was not registered by the state as a legal marriage. Marriage documents show Elmi and Omar married in 2009.

Osman said that not long after Omar married Hirsi, the man he was told was Omar’s brother entered the picture.

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“People began noticing that Ilhan and Southside were often with a very effeminate young guy,” Osman said. “Southside” was a nickname Osman used for Hirsi. “He was very feminine in the way he dressed — he would wear light lipstick and pink clothes and very, very, short shorts in the summer. People started whispering about him.”

He said there was no secrecy then about the young man’s identity.

“[Hirsi] and Ilhan both told me it was Ilhan’s brother and he had been living in London but he was mixing with what were seen as bad influences that the family did not like,” Osman said.

“So they sent him to Minneapolis as ‘rehab.’”

Osman said the wedding to Elmi was deliberately kept quiet, unlike her first marriage.

“When [Hirsi] and Ilhan got married, a lot of people were invited. It was a big Islamic wedding uniting two large clans in the Minneapolis community. I would say there were 100-150 people there,” he said.

But, “When she married Elmi, no one even knew about it,” he said, adding that he suspected someone outside the Somali community was needed for the marriage because community members would know they were siblings.