Describing his feeling as “shock and stress” when he received a call from a friend in the UK telling him that they saw his wife on the paper of Daily Mirror newspaper claiming she is the wife of Khalid Masood, the terrorist who recently killed several people in a recent Westminster terror attack, the husband of Rohey Hydara, Musa Jammeh is seeking answers as to how this terrible mix up could happen, especially coming from reputable internationally known and read newspapers. For starters, Rohey Hydara whose pictures was plastered on the Daily Mirror is currently and has always been married to a Gambian, neither does she know a person by the name of Khalid Masood, nor has she even ever set foot in the U.K – does not even own a passport.
As if that is not enough distress, he came to discovered that the Daily Mirror is not the only culprit – the Mail Online, the Telegraph, and most of all the other major newspapers in the U.K had made the same blunder – his wife’s picture, instead of the real “Rohey Hydara” who lives in the U.K and is allegedly the wife of Masood was all over the place.
What makes this case so bizarre is that a simple due diligence would have raised a red flag for these widely read papers – Rohey is a very common name in The Gambia, so is the last name Hydara. This is akin to randomly grab the picture of a William Murphy from Ireland and present him as the criminal law enforcement is looking for without making the effort to confirm that is the right William Murphy’s picture, which makes it both irresponsible and ignorant – the family therefore wants these papers held responsible for such blatant laziness leading to the heavy unnecessary distressed caused by this confusion.
The Fatu Network was not able to talk to Rohey (the wrong one) but her husband was happy to share their ordeal – how their kids are already being mocked in school, the hundreds of calls they have been getting from all over the world accusing him of being terrorists (since the story alleges that the husband is the terrorist), how this will potentially impede their ability to travel to anywhere in the world, and adversely affecting their job prospects.
Meanwhile, efforts to reach The Telegraph, Daily Mirror and Mail Online proved futile.
