Rep. Ilhan Omar has long described her late father, Nur Omar Mohamed, as an "educator" who fled Somalia's civil war and arrived in the United States with his family as a refugee in 1995. A New York Post exclusive, citing Somali historian Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, says that story is not true. According to Ingiriis, an Oxford University researcher who studies Somalia's civil war, Nur was a full colonel in the army of dictator Siad Barre who remained loyal to the regime until it collapsed in 1991 — and who only left after the dictatorship fell.
"He was a full colonel in Siad Barre's military regime," Ingiriis told the Post. "Ilhan's father was never an educator."
"He was part and parcel of those who caused and created the mayhem they 'fled' to live comfortably in the United States."
The account matches earlier reporting. Nur, also known as Nur Said, joined Somalia's military in the late 1960s and rose to colonel through postings in Mogadishu, Hargeisa and Garbahaarrey, with training in the Soviet Union or Egypt. A 2020 obituary in the Sahan Journal, a Somali-focused Minnesota outlet, called him an esteemed senior officer in the Somali National Army, and a former fellow officer, Yusuf Ismail Faraton, told the outlet Nur played a significant role in the 1977–78 Ogaden War against Ethiopia, where he commanded a regiment. Former colleagues in the Minneapolis Somali community have confirmed the same details.
Siad Barre's regime, which held power from 1969 to 1991, carried out the Isaaq genocide in northern Somalia, with estimates of 50,000 to 200,000 civilian deaths, the near-total destruction of cities like Hargeisa, and mass displacement — a campaign in which the Somali army was central. There is no public evidence that Nur personally ordered or committed specific war crimes, but he was a senior officer who served the regime until the end.
That record sits at the heart of the refugee question. United States law bars refugee status for anyone who participated in persecution, and Ingiriis argues Nur must have omitted or downplayed his senior military role when seeking asylum. "He only fled when the dictatorship fell in 1991," the scholar said, adding that Nur "was the beneficiary of the military regime and should not have been given asylum whatsoever." The family entered the U.S. legally in 1995 after years in a Kenyan refugee camp. Nur later worked as a taxi driver and postal worker in Minneapolis and died of COVID-19 in 2020.
The story is resurfacing at the worst possible moment for Omar. Federal agents searched her Washington-area home on Monday under a court-authorized warrant, and sources have told CBS News and Reuters that the investigation centers on immigration paperwork — including documents completed by her late father when she was a child. The Post further reported that investigators may be examining her birth year: public sources listed 1981 until 2019, while Omar says she was born in 1982 and that her birth records were destroyed. Omar has denied wrongdoing and called the search political intimidation, writing, "I will not be silenced." President Trump denied any role in it.
Ingiriis closed with the victims of the regime Nur served. "I think it is very wrong for the United States to host war criminals," he said. "This creates a constant resentment and sadness among the real victims who were terrorized by the military regime under which Nur Said loyally served."
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