DNA could be vital for passport application

London, July 13, 2013 (SDN) —DNA evidence could be vital to a British passport application for a man living in Somaliland.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London confirmed this week that Nim’an Bowden, who claims his father was former Dartmouth man Brian Bowden, had been advised on making a British passport application.
The FCO added it could not speak about individual cases but any application received would go through normal procedures and ultimately it would be up to the Home Office whether to accept it.
The Chronicle understands Nim’an was visited in Hargeisa on Tuesday by staff from the British embassy in neighbouring Ethiopia.
A source close to Nim’an’s campaign told us he believed embassy staff met Nim’an in the city’s Ambassador Hotel.
He added that Nim’an’s supporters were hoping to obtain DNA evidence from a relative of his father in the UK which could then be matched and used to support his claim.
As we have already reported, Brian Bowden went to work for the Hargeisa Water Agency in 1958. He later married a Somali woman and they had five children.
As Somalia descended in civil war in the early 1990s, Brian and his family fled from Hargeisa, in the north of the country, to the capital city Mogadishu.
He was working at the British embassy there at the time it was evacuated in January 1991.
Brian stayed behind to look after the embassy, its local staff and his wife and family. There he was met by journalist Aidan Hartley, who described him as ‘the last Englishman in the whole of Somalia’.
Shortly afterwards, he was robbed and killed by an armed gang.
When Nim’an’s mother died six years later, he ended up living on the streets of Hargeisa, in what is now the self-declared state of Somaliland. We have been unable to find out what happened to his Somali brother and sisters.

Source: kingsbridgetoday