Ilhan Omar’s second husband calls himself a “dirty dandy” on social media and has run off to South Africa, dodging President Trump’s accusations he is her brother.
Mystery has long swirled about the embattled Minnesota congresswoman’s marriage to Ahmed Elmi, whom she was wed to between 2009 and 2017, which various politicians on the right have called a sham.
Elmi, 40, left the US long before he officially divorced Omar and seemingly disappeared. However, The Post can now reveal he’s been studying in the UK and South Africa.
The one-time refugee describes himself as a “dirty dandy” on his social media profiles where he posts photos of himself wearing garish fashions and having drinks alongside handsome men at upscale London cafes.
Since the early 2020s he’s studied at Bristol University in the UK, receiving his doctorate and then becoming at research assistant at the University’s School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, where his areas of study are listed as “critically queer,” “decolonization,” “gender research group,” and “center for black humanities.”
Recent social media activity reviewed by The Post show Elmi has been on an extended trip to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was photographed wearing a visitor’s pass for Witwatersrand University.
“So far, so fab…a month in JoBurg,” he wrote in one post.
Controversy has long surrounded his marriage to Omar. She had a child with her first husband, Ahmed Hirsi, while legally married to Elmi. It has been speculated that they are siblings.
At a rally on December 9 President Trump, referring to Omar and Elmi, claimed to a rally crowd in Pennsylvania: “She married her brother in order to get in [The US], right? We ought to get her the hell out.”
Omar is an immigrant from Somalia who became a naturalized US citizen in 2000 at the age of 17. Sources indicate it was actually Elmi who needed help with emigrating to the US.
Abdihakim Osman, a Minneapolis-based Somali blogger and community leader, told The Daily Mail in 2020 he knew Omar growing up.
He claimed when Elmi blew into town in the late 2000s, the future congresswoman introduced him as her brother from London to members of the community, saying he needed “papers,” referring to immigration documents.
At the time, Omar was married to Hirsi, but only by a non-legally binding Muslim ceremony in 2002, which was not recognized by the state. The following year their first child Isra was born. Their second child, son Adnan, was born in 2005.
A Hennepin County, Minn. marriage certificate reviewed by The Post shows Omar and Elmi then married on February 12, 2009 in Eden Prairie, Minn.
That wedding — held by a Christian minister, despite Omar being Muslim — was legally recognized under US law, and would have given Elmi a pathway to apply for a green card.
Marrying a US citizen is often the fastest way to get legal status to stay in the country, much faster than applying for a work or study visa and waiting for it to be approved which can take months or years. However, marriage fraud is a serious federal crime with punishment of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Elmi was ordered to come to the US from the UK by his father, who discovered Elmi was living a decadent and immoral life in London, according to Osman.
“People began noticing that Ilhan and [Hirsi] were often with a very effeminate young guy. He was very feminine in the way he dressed. He would wear light lipstick and pink clothes and very, very, short shorts in the summer. People started whispering about him,” he claimed.
Ilhan’s job was to make sure he got on the straight and narrow, he added.
“[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. So they sent him to Minneapolis as ‘rehab,’ ” Osman told the Daily Mail.
Whether they are actually siblings or it is just vicious rumor is harder to prove. Birth records from their native, war-torn home country Somalia are impossible to track down, if they exist at all.
After Omar’s 2016 primary win for the Minnesota House of Representatives other local bloggers began to raise questions about Omar’s suspected bigamy. She was legally wed to Elmi, but most knew her actual husband to be Hirsi, they pointed out.
“No one knew there had been a wedding [to Elmi] until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later,” Osman, 45, told the Daily Mail.
Omar, 43, explained this away to local reporters in 2016, saying in a statement her marriage to Elmi was “a difficult part of my personal history that I did not consider relevant in the context of a political campaign.”
She also wrote Elmi entirely out of her autobiography, making no mention or reference to him.
She has since maintained that position, calling the rumors “absurd and offensive,” and launching accusations of racism toward anyone who suggests her marriage to Elmi wasn’t legitimate. Omar did not respond to requests for comment from The Post and Elmi was not able to be reached.
What makes Omar and Elmi’s marriage even more bizarre is that Omar had another child with first husband Hirsi while still married to Elmi. Their third child, daughter Ilwad, was born in 2012.
Public property records show that all three — Omar, Elmi and Hirsi — also shared the same address for a period of time.
Husbands Elmi and Hirsi also appeared to have a chummy relationship, appearing in selfies together cheesing for the camera — odd for two men married to the same woman.
Shortly after their 2009 wedding, Omar and Elmi moved to Fargo where they attended the University of North Dakota together. Omar graduated in 2011.
Five years later, and just ahead of her congressional run, Omar and Elmi divorced. Omar then legally married Hirsi.
Omar’s father is widely known by the name Nur Omar Mohamed but according to leftwing fact-checking site Snopes, the father’s full name was often recorded as Nur Said Mohamed Elmi, surprisingly similar to Omar’s ex-husband and alleged brother’s full name, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, which lines up with some naming practices between fathers and sons in Somali culture.
In 2018, the Minneapolis Star Tribune claimed to have viewed documents provided by Omar of the family’s 1995 entry into the US, which listed her father as having seven children. The outlet claimed Elmi’s name was not listed. Only the name of one sibling, sister Sahra Noor, a Minnesota health care executive, is publicly known.
