THE SOMALI woman who has withdrawn her application for damages received an apology from the Minister for Justice in July because her family were unnecessarily left in a refugee camp in Ethiopia for three years.
In late October, officers from the Garda National Immigration Bureau arrested the 30-year-old under the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act for suspected identity fraud. She was released without charge on the same day, but her travel documents have been retained by gardaí.
Gardaí suspect the woman's relationship to some of her family members may not be as described by her in the application for family reunion and have taken DNA samples from the woman and her husband.
A file on the case was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The woman, who fled Somalia in 2003 and secured refugee status here in 2004, had made several unsuccessful efforts over the past three years to find out what was happening to her application for family reunification. She said the department failed to reply to several letters from her and her solicitors and it was only in late 2007, when her solicitors secured her department file under the Freedom of Information Act, that she realised the visas for her husband and three children had been issued in August 2005. In October, Mr Ahern told the Dáil that when the decision to grant visas to the woman's immediate family members was made in 2005, "letters were prepared containing details of the decisions but, due to an unfortunate oversight, these letters were not issued, at the time, to the applicant."
A spokesman for the Department of Justice, which granted the woman family reunification after investigating her case, said the department did not make a request to the Garda to investigate her initial asylum claim.
