• Sweden edition

Mystery Malmö man with no memory identified

Published: 29 Oct 09 07:03 CET | Double click on a word to get a translation
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/22938/20091029/

The mystery of a man who woke up in a Malmö hospital in September claiming to have lost his memory and not know who he was has been solved.

The man has been identified as Mahmoud Houssein, a 65-year-old man who is married and lives in the German capital Berlin, according to TV3’s Efterlyst (‘Wanted’) television programme, which first publicized the man’s case on October 14th.

“Who am I? Please, has anyone seen me before?” he pleaded on the show in accented English, claiming to have no idea where he was from or how he ended up in Sweden.

Police have been working feverishly for the last two weeks, investigating dozens of tips from the public in an effort to determine the man’s identity.

In the end, however it was Houssein who revealed his identity when he visited his personal website on a public computer in located in a Malmö municipal office building.

City employees recognized Houssein from his appearance on television and took note when he visited a website featuring a picture of a man who looked exactly like him.

The municipal employees then reported the incident to police.

During questioning by police, Houssein claimed he ended up at the site by chance after having browsed sites featuring missing persons in Germany.

But police doubt the man’s explanation, suspecting instead that Houssein was lying about his supposed memory loss.

“As it looks today, it seems to be made up,” Malmö police investigator Anders Lindskog told Efterlyst.

Houssein, who has no criminal record in Germany and who had not been reported as missing, will now be sent back to his home country.

However, the questions of how and why he came to Sweden, and why he may have concocted the story about having lost his memory, remain unanswered.

David Landes
news@thelocal.se
+46 8 656 6513

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08:20 October 29, 2009 by canuk
how am i not surprised! this was a desperate call for attention
09:40 October 29, 2009 by sherkovic
search and look for the earlier news and comments down below. All the f***** retards who jumped at me when I showed my suspicions about the story he told! Nevertheless here is the answer or may be a partial answer!!
09:43 October 29, 2009 by peropaco
Poor guy probably has one of those ball breaking wife and just wanted to get a news start.
10:47 October 29, 2009 by entry
He seems to always have a smile in the photos on his web site. Maybe he did just need a break. ( http://mahmoud-houssein.de/ )
11:37 October 29, 2009 by naturebox
hmmm, weird ending of the story.
12:06 October 29, 2009 by Beavis
Strange story.. seems he not short on cash, new slk merc and house.

However I did say he sounded more German than Dutch.. can I have that linguists job, they obviosly havent got a clue!
12:39 October 29, 2009 by here for the summer
wasn't the person who noticed his computer page smart ?
12:59 October 29, 2009 by eZee.se
I wonder how much tax payer money went into this "search"
13:54 October 29, 2009 by rumcajs
I think he just hadn't done anything interesting in his life and made up all this "movie".
18:04 October 29, 2009 by SamQam
I remember some linguist speculated that he is from Holland based on his English accent :-)))) What kind of linguist is that???? How do you confuse a German accent with Dutch ...Loooooooooool
19:38 October 29, 2009 by wxman
I agree, SamQam, I was thinking the same thing. "Yes, he most definitely has a Dutch accent." Then he turns out to be an Arab who lives in Berlin. Hell, weathermen do a better job! (personal bias) Experts, is there anything they don't know?. Apologies to Homer Simpson.
22:33 October 29, 2009 by SamQam
@wxman

Maybe the combination of German and Arabic gives you a dutch accent :-)))))))) This is just a theory though.
22:59 October 29, 2009 by wxman
I guess all we can do is laugh; it's a crazy world. Cheers, SamQam.
08:41 October 30, 2009 by Marc the Texan
I remember all the people who were heavily criticized on the previous story for suspecting he was lying.
13:20 October 30, 2009 by Beynch
I want all readers to refer to my initial comment on this story. I rest my case.
16:31 October 31, 2009 by delusion1982
the question is: if he has a website with photos, they would have easily found his website by running some face recognition algorithms on google images. That seemed like a intuitive thing to do. at least we would have known how good these algorithms are:)
03:47 November 1, 2009 by cheribob54
I knew he was a fake ever since I first read this story!! Shame on him!
16:19 November 4, 2009 by Zatoichi
Barack Houssein Obama?
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