A Minnesota man who claims to have ties to Ilhan Omar said the Democratic congresswoman married her brother to help him gain citizenship in the United States.
Abdihakim Osman told the Daily Mail that Omar married Ahmed Elmi, who he says is Omar’s brother, in a Christian ceremony outside of the Minneapolis Somali community so as to keep the marriage secret. The two legally married on Feb. 12, 2009, in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, south of Minneapolis, before both enrolling at North Dakota State University in 2010. Omar has said that she split with Elmi in 2011, and the two were officially divorced in 2018.
“She said she needed to get papers for her brother to go to school,” Osman, 40, told the Daily Mail. “We all thought she was just getting papers together to allow him to stay in this country. Once she had the papers they could apply for student loans.”
Christian minister Wilecia Harris, who presided over Elmi and Omar’s union, refused to speak with investigators and told the Daily Mail an interview was “not going to happen, not now and not never.”
Omar’s spokesman declined to comment on the congresswoman’s personal life. “The Congresswoman is focused on the work her constituents sent her to Washington to accomplish,” the representative said.
The marriage to Elmi came several years after Omar married Ahmed Hirsi in a nonlegal Muslim ceremony in 2002 that was never registered with the state of Minnesota. Osman said “no one even knew about” the marriage to Elmi before journalists turned up certificates proving their union.
Omar, 38, eventually married Hirsi legally in a 2018 ceremony before the two divorced after it was alleged that Omar was having an affair with her chief fundraiser Tim Mynett, who denied the claim. Mynett’s wife divorced him and said he had professed his love for Omar.
Osman, who runs a Somali-centric Facebook page called Xerta Shekh, met Hirsi at a barber shop and would eat lunch with him at a now-defunct Indian restaurant. Later, Osman worked the cashier register at Hirsi’s Urban Hookah shop.
‘[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.
Last month, it was reported that the FBI was investigating evidence that suggested Elmi is Omar’s brother. Omar called the accusations “disgusting lies” during her 2018 campaign for a House seat.
