Stranded Canadian en route home

“When I told him I was coming home he was so excited,” she said. “He said he had a surprise for me.”

Charges of carrying a passport that was not her own and travelling illegally in Kenya were dropped Friday in a Nairobi court, removing the final hurdle to her return.

The departure closes a chapter on an ordeal that left Ms. Mohamud mentally exhausted and physically fragile, wracked by a case of pneumonia that had set in months ago, while she was sleeping on the dank concrete floor of an overcrowded, flea-ridden Nairobi prison.

Ms. Mohamud had mixed feelings about flying on KLM, an airline she plans to sue along with the Kenyan and Canadian governments, after an airline official detained her before a May 21 flight, saying she did not look like her passport picture.

“This is the last time I will fly with them,” she said. “They are horrible, horrible.”

In spite of Kenya's role in the hardships she has faced over the past months, she expects she'll be back. Her mother lives here and she has many friends.

“I am not excited to leave Kenya and never come back again,” she said. “But I am excited that my trouble is over.”

In a courtroom crowded with friends, supporters and journalists earlier Friday, Senior Principle Magistrate Stella Muketi Kenyan said the words that would finally allow Ms. Mohamud to return home to her 12-year-old son in Toronto.

“The accused is discharged,” she said. “The accused is to be handed over to Canadian officials by the department of immigration.”

Ms. Mohamud was whisked away into the smoggy racket of Nairobi traffic to receive emergency papers from the Canadian High Commission across town and then on to Kenya's department of immigration to receive a long-awaited visa granting her legal passage home.

The day started off badly, however. At one point lawyers worried that her case file had been lost somewhere in the musty warren of notoriously back-logged offices of the high court. Ms. Mohamud's lawyer vanished for a time, leaving his student assistant to stand and reel off the long list of rooms where they had searched for the file.

The sense that a person could simply be lost within the vast, seemingly, indifferent bureaucracy was clear.

“In the beginning it was really, really scary,” Ms. Mohamud said of the court appearance. “But in the end it was really, really good.”

She doesn't resent the slow seep of Kenyan justice.

“I want to say thank you, Kenya, for having me here without a document,” she said. “Canada is my country. However, I can say they made a mistake.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday said Ottawa's top task was to hasten Ms. Mohamud's return, after weeks of silence from his cabinet ministers about the case. Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has asked for a “full accounting” of how the Canada Border Services Agency handled Ms. Mohamud's case and will review its actions, he said Thursday.

Ms. Mohamud, who was born in Somalia, was unable to leave Kenya after authorities said her lips did not match her four-year-old passport photo. Canadian consular officials called her an imposter, voided her passport and turned her case over to Kenya for prosecution. Officials maintained that she was not who she claimed to be, even after Ms. Mohamud handed over numerous pieces of identification, offered fingerprints and finally demanded her DNA be tested.

It wasn't until the genetic tests confirmed her identity Monday that Canadian officials began preparing emergency travel documents that would permit her to return to Toronto and reunite with her 12-year-old son.

Ms. Mohamud was visiting her mother in Kenya and was about to fly back to Canada in May when officials stopped her in the Nairobi airport. After her case was handed over to Kenyan authorities, Ms. Mohamud spent eight days in jail before being released on bail without travel documents.

Canada footed the $800 bill for the genetic testing.

The case has raised questions of how consular officials determine the identity of Canadian citizens and whether the government is picking and choosing which Canadians it assists.

Another Canadian, Brenda Martin, was freed from a Mexican prison last year after her plight drew national headlines and put pressure on Ottawa to respond. Ms. Martin spent two years behind bars in connection with an Internet fraud scheme run by her former boss, Alyn Waage, but has maintained she was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Amid mounting pressure from family members, friends and politicians, Mr. Harper personally intervened and called Mexican President Felipe Calderon to discuss Ms. Martin's case.

With files from Canadian Press