Teen Stowaway's Mom: His Dad Told Him I Was Dead

The teen stowaway who survived a five-hour flight in the wheel well of a Boeing 767 was trying to get to Somalia to see his family—including his mother, who tells Voice of America and the Daily Mail that the boy, Yahya Abdi, had only recently learned she was alive. Ubah Mohamed Abdulle is divorced from the father of her three children, Abdilahi Yusuf Abdi, and says he took them from Somalia without her knowledge. She says she was not allowed to speak to her kids and hadn't heard anything about them since 2006, and "they were even told that I was dead."

She says her husband remarried and told her children—and US authorities when they came to the country—she had been killed in a rocket attack in Mogadishu, but Yahya found out through the local Somali community, two years ago, that wasn't true. A family member says Yahya has been "unhappy at home" since finding out, and "very angry with his father," and adds that the teen doesn't get along with his stepmother. The boy's mother is now asking the US government and international organizations to help her reunite with her children, and she's trying to find a way to get to the US. (More Somalia stories.)