Editor's note: This is part two in a two-part series about the disappearance of Nuseiba Hasan in the Hamilton area. To read Part 1, click here. Yasmin Hasan is a pseudonym used by Nuseiba’s daughter, who fears for her safety amid all the unanswered questions about her birth mother’s death. Village Media has agreed to use the pseudonym for this article.
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When Yasmin Hasan was 14, she began wondering about her birth mother. She didn’t have a name or face for the woman who surrendered her to the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) when she was two years old. All she had were a few basic details.
Every once in a while, Yasmin would run a Google search with the little bit she did know about her birth mother. Things like “Jordanian woman Hamilton.”
In early 2017, while doing one of those searches, she typed “missing Jordanian Hamilton” into the search engine. It produced a hit: an article from CBC about Nuseiba Hasan’s disappearance.
By that point, Hamilton police were treating the case as a homicide.
As soon as Yasmin saw Nuseiba’s photo in the article, she knew she was looking at her birth mother.
“I realized she looked exactly like me,” Yasmin told Village Media.
She said the article mentioned that Nuseiba had given up a child for adoption. A few weeks later, Yasmin turned 18 and called Hamilton police to confirm what she already knew from the article and from speaking with her adoptive mother.
Yasmin had to accept a new reality, and with it a unique kind of grief.
“I went through the same stages of grief all people go through when they lose a loved one,” she said. “Except for me it hurts a lot more because we don’t have her body and she hadn’t been declared dead.”
In the years following that Google hit, Yasmin became Nuseiba’s fiercest advocate. Her goal is to not only uncover the truth about what happened to her birth mother, but to ensure she is properly memorialized.
As part of that effort, Yasmin recently filed an application in civil court, asking that Nuseiba be declared officially dead — even though her body has never been found and police continue to treat her case as an unsolved homicide.
Yasmin’s application required her lawyers to compile evidence outlining the last years of Nuseiba’s life — and with it, another look into the circumstances surrounding her suspected death. Obtained by Village Media, the documents filed in court provide more details about what a judge would later describe as the “challenging relationship” between Nuseiba and her family.
Family rift
Seven years before she disappeared, in the first month of 1999, Nuseiba Hasan checked into St. Joseph’s Hospital to give birth. She was 19 and alone.
A report released to Yasmin about her adoption says hospital staff contacted the CAS when she was born. Staff were concerned about Nuseiba’s ability to care for Yasmin, as she “was not open” with them.
But Nuseiba did well as a mother for the next two years, according to the report, though there were concerns that Nuseiba and Yasmin were in an abusive home.
Yasmin's biological father was incarcerated for assaulting Nuseiba, and allegedly had a friend assault her again while he was in jail. Nuseiba was afraid to speak up against him in court, and the assaults led to Nuseiba missing class, then losing her financial aid for her program at Fanshawe College.
Shortly before Nuseiba put Yasmin in foster care, records from CAS show they were living in Hamilton’s shelter system.
During those two years, Nuseiba was described as “an awesome mom” by friends. The reports show that Yasmin was well looked-after. But motherhood was isolating for Nuseiba. She was not in contact with her family and was raising Yasmin alone.
A report from CAS says Nuseiba’s “family was reported to be unsupportive because she had a child born out of wedlock, and because her birth father was not a Muslim.” It says Nuseiba was estranged from her family at the time of the adoption, and it did not seem like her family was pressuring her to give up Yasmin.
In March 2001, Nuseiba began the process of relinquishing Yasmin.
Nuseiba was “quiet and sullen” as she put Yasmin into a society wardship, but said she did not waver and wanted to move the process along quickly.
“She felt there was a possibility she could reunite with her family if she was no longer a single parent,” the report says.
But despite her efforts to reunite with her family, investigators believe the rift may have been too great.
In an affidavit filed as part of the court application to have Nuseiba declared dead, Det. Daryl Reid with the Hamilton police homicide unit wrote that she had “diverted from her strict Muslim upbringing” and “was not willing to abide by the strict rules imposed upon her by her family.”
Sometime between 2002 and 2004, a friend who had known Nuseiba since she was 16 ran into her at a downtown Hamilton grocery store. That friend later told Yasmin that Nuseiba “looked down and defeated.”
While there are no official suspects or charges laid, Reid said police have always been looking at the Hasan family for answers.
“The investigative theory in this case is that Nuseiba’s disappearance and death resulted from the actions of a family member or members,” Reid told Village Media.
Police will not say which specific relatives they suspect, but Reid confirmed the investigation is ongoing.
‘I feel sorry for her’
In April 2022, Yasmin went to court for Nuseiba.
It wasn’t a murder trial. No one was held accountable for Nuseiba’s disappearance or murder — but Yasmin was able to reclaim her rights to her biological mother.
And to meet members of Nuseiba’s family.
“I’ve never met any of them face-to-face, but for the court hearing, it was done virtually through Zoom. One of her siblings was present,” she said.
Seeing one of Nuseiba’s two sisters during the trial brought up a feeling of empathy for Yasmin.
“I feel sorry for her,” she said, though she did not identify which sister it was — Sara Hasan or Hilwa Hasan.
Yasmin said she was unable to elaborate on why she felt sorry for the sister. Speaking about Nuseiba and the Hasan family is difficult for her, but the affidavit filed in support of Nuseiba’s death declaration gives more insight.
Under the Declarations of Death Act, an “interested person,” such as a relative, can apply for a death declaration for one of two reasons: if the individual disappeared in “circumstances of peril,” or if they’ve been absent for at least seven years.
The applicant must also inform any other “interested persons” about the court case. For Yasmin, that meant serving notice to Nuseiba’s mother and all her siblings, many of whom still live near Flamborough, in Cambridge and Milton.
Only one relative — Nuseiba’s sister, Sara Hasan — formally responded to the application and spoke with Yasmin over Facebook for a short period.
“She shared with me what Nuseiba was like as a child as well as photos of her,” Yasmin wrote in her affidavit.
Yasmin was in contact with Sara for about a year, from May 2020 to March 2021. She wrote that they primarily spoke around birthdays and holidays. During that time, Sara told Yasmin she had not seen Nuseiba since 2005.
Sara told her that when she asked one of her brothers, Hasan Hasan, where Nuseiba was, he said: "She ran off again.”
Through these Facebook conversations, Yasmin said she was told that two of Nuseiba’s brothers, Mohammed Hasan and Hasan Hasan, were present at the farm around the time Nuseiba made her last visit in the fall of 2006.
Yasmin wrote that she believes “neither Nuseiba's mother nor Nuseiba's siblings have come to terms with Nuseiba's disappearance.”
On Aug. 28, 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice declared Nuseiba Hasan officially deceased. Her date of death is now listed as May 4, 2022.
“The circumstances of Nuseiba’s disappearance have been the subject of police press releases and significant media attention, both local and national,” reads the court judgment granting Yasmin’s application.
“While Sara resists the request to declare her sister dead, her appeal to me in that respect was more emotional than evidence-based,” the judge wrote. “During her submissions, she asked rhetorically, and tearfully, ‘what is the rush’ to make this declaration when no body has been found?”
“Yet no one, let alone Nuseiba, has come forward with information respecting Nuseiba’s whereabouts.”
If she were still alive, Nuseiba would be 42 years old.
Place to rest
The road to having Nuseiba declared dead was not an easy one for Yasmin, who has had to grieve a mother she never had the chance to know. But the search for justice has been a way for Yasmin to get to know Nuseiba.
“It feels like I am connected to her more, by advocating for her,” Yasmin said.
Yasmin said there are still a few legal loose ends to tie up in her bid to become the executor of Nuseiba’s estate, following the death declaration. But when that is done, Yasmin said she would like to travel to Hamilton to create some kind of memorial to the birth mother who put her up for adoption to give her a fresh start at life.
“It will allow me to give her the dignity of any person that passes away — having a memorial service for her,” she says. “I know there is no body, but I would like to have a physical memorial of some sort for her.”
Yasmin says it is “very upsetting” that there is still no resolution in Nuseiba’s case. Her remains have never been found and no one has been held accountable for her disappearance or death.
She said she believes police have a lead, and it is frustrating that the case is at a standstill waiting for someone to come forward.
“A resolution, to me, would be an arrest and conviction,” she said. “Or someone gets sentenced, or her body being found.”
