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Ilhan Omar has been hiding links to two of her siblings in London in an alleged bid to create further distance between her and rumored brother Ahmed Nur Said Elmi — whom she married in 2009.
Multiple sources told The Post that Mohamed Nur Said Elmi, a political activist for the Puntland cause in Somalia, and Leila Nur Said Elmi, 53, are Omar’s siblings who live in London.
Ahmed Elmi, 41 — to whom Omar was married for eight years, and who described himself as “a gay man” in a recent academic paper — is also believed to have lived with Leila while growing up.
The congresswoman, 44, arrived in the US as a refugee from Somalia in 1995, while the other branch of her family made their way to London via Ukraine.
“They are all one family,” a friend of the Omar family claimed in an interview with The Post. “The siblings have the same mum and the same dad and within the Somali community acknowledge each other as brothers and sisters.
“But they keep it quiet to the rest of the world because Ilhan is now in politics. They do not want people to find the link between her and Ahmed [Elmi].”
The family spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp after fleeing Somalia when war broke out.
But the family, which originally had the surname Elmi, made the decision to seek safety abroad as soon as they could, according to a family friend in Minnesota.
“It’s what people in the community did when they were desperate,” the source told The Post. “There was obviously a lot of danger and once people knew they could get into another country, they’d help take on as many others as possible to keep them safe.”
Omar, her sister Sahra and late father Nur Omar Mohamed first settled in Arlington, Virginia, before making their way to Minnesota.
Her alleged brother, Mohamed, now appears to be heavily involved in Puntland politics, regularly traveling to the region from London, according to his posts on social media.
He and his sister Leila have ties with war criminal Mohamed Said Hersi “Morgan” who led a brutal state-sponsored massacre against the Isaaq clan in 1988 under dictator Siad Barre.
As a picture obtained by The Post shows, the pair proudly smiled alongside the warlord for a picture in January 2024. Mohamed also paid tribute to him on social media after he died a year later, noting that their families shared a bond of friendship and that Gen. Morgan was close with their father.
Gen. Morgan, known as the “butcher of Hargeisa,” orchestrated a campaign that saw cities flattened due to aerial bombardment, wells poisoned and up to 200,000 civilians killed in what many scholars refer to as a genocide.
Omar’s late father also went by the name Nur Said Elmi and was also a prominent military commander in the Somali dictatorship, which millions fled from.
Leila, Mohamed and Sahra are all linked on Facebook, proudly leaving “hearts” on each other’s photos and all are friends with alleged father Nur, who went by Nur Said, which means “light of happiness” in Arabic, which Omar has previously claimed is just a nickname for her father, although Somali sources dispute this.
Omar, Sahra, Leila, Mohamed and Elmi did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
Omar’s alleged sister Leila married a Somali man 11 years her senior in 1997 in Camden, London. The British marriage certificate, obtained by the Post, lists her father as Nur Said Elmi, a military officer from Somalia.
Multiple sources have claimed the person listed on the British legal document is Nur, Omar’s father, and that all of the siblings in the US and UK also share the same mother — Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, who the Congresswoman says died when she was around two years old.
“We are a small community, and everybody talks, nothing is hidden,” a friend of the Omar family told The Post.
“Leila and Mohamed went with another relative to London who had space to take them in. Nur used to talk about his children in London very proudly. It wasn’t much of a secret here.”
The family friend claimed this is why Leila was raising younger brother, Elmi, as he lived with her in London. But a series of alleged disagreements saw him move to Minnesota where he had a “larger family support network.”
“Leila was looking after Ahmed before they decided to send him to America to be with his father because he was getting involved with bad influences, living a lifestyle our religion did not approve of,” he told The Post. “She could not control him.”
The two branches of the family often saw each other, with Leila visiting her alleged father — who died from complications related to COVID in 2020 — in the US in 2016, according to the source.
“I know the family very well,” he said. “I remember seeing Leila when she came here. She looks almost identical to Sahra.”
When Omar was allegedly racially abused by a taxi driver in Washington, DC in December 2016, she revealed she was with her sister during the incident.
Most people had assumed this was Omar’s sister Sahra, but another friend of the family gave away in a Facebook it was actually Leila, saying how wonderful it was to meet her that night.
“On Wednesday night I had an opportunity to have dinner with State Representative-Elect Ilhan Omar & her lovely sis Leila Elmi,” he wrote on Facebook at the time, in defense of the Congresswoman. Hirsi wrote this post? I see online claims that someone else did.
Omar also reportedly referred to her father as Nur Said in June 2013 before subsequently deleting the social media post years later.
Following his death, well-wishers took to social media to pay tribute to “Nur Said Elmi” and left messages of condolences for his “children” Omar, Sahra, Leila and Mohamed.
It is part of a growing body of evidence which has fueled speculation the Congresswoman’s 2009 marriage was a sham to obtain legal immigration status for her alleged brother.
When in Minnesota, Elmi lived with Omar and Hirsi, whom she has three children with, including a daughter born in 2012 while she was married to Elmi.
Following a stint in South Africa, Elmi returned to the UK, where he now works at the University of Bristol.
