Somaliland's Parliament Named Somalia's Sitting President in an Unlawful Killing. Two Days Later, Its Own President Asked the UN to Recognise the Country That Did It.

Abstract: On 21 September 2026, during the ninth sitting of its 15th session, Somaliland's House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding an independent investigation into the February 2024 death of Abdinasir Muse Abdirahman, known as Dahable, a 32-year-old Somaliland-born employee of the Somali Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) whose body was found in his residence in Mogadishu's Wadajir district on 18 February 2024. Forty-one of the 42 lawmakers present voted in favour; the sitting Speaker did not cast a vote. The resolution, presented by Second Deputy Speaker Ali Hamoud Jibril, characterised Dahable's death as unlawful, alleged he had been targeted because of his Somaliland origin, and named Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, former National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) chief Mahad Salad and the Civil Aviation Authority's director in connection with the killing. It did not present evidence establishing any of their involvement, and none of the claims could be independently verified. The resolution also called on foreign governments and international human-rights bodies to press Mogadishu for an independent inquiry and the prosecution of whoever is found responsible. Somali police said at the time of Dahable's death that an investigation had begun and that six people had been detained; in the two and a half years since, no suspect has been publicly named and no charges have been announced. Two days after the vote, on 23 September, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Irro addressed a recognition rally at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza in New York, directly opposite UN headquarters, during the UN General Assembly's high-level week, adding a parliament-endorsed accusation of lawlessness in Mogadishu to a recognition campaign already built around Somaliland's claim to be the more governable of the two capitals.

What the resolution actually does

The 21 September vote is a political instrument, not a legal one: Somaliland's parliament has no jurisdiction inside Somalia and cannot compel any investigation, arrest or prosecution in Mogadishu. What it does is put on the formal record, by a nearly unanimous vote of a national legislature, a set of accusations that until now had circulated mainly among Dahable's family, Somaliland officials and diaspora advocacy campaigns. Second Deputy Speaker Ali Hamoud Jibril framed the vote as a matter of parliament's responsibility to Somaliland citizens; the resolution's substantive asks are for an independent investigation into the killing and for the prosecution of whoever is found responsible, plus an explicit appeal for foreign governments and international human-rights organisations to press Mogadishu on the case. That last element is the one worth watching: a resolution addressed as much outward, to Washington, European capitals and the UN bodies Somaliland is currently courting for recognition, as it is inward, to a family that has waited two and a half years for a named suspect.

The killing the resolution reopens

Dahable's body was found at his residence in Mogadishu's Wadajir district on 18 February 2024. He was 32, originally from Somaliland's Gebiley district, and worked for the SCAA, the federal body that administers Somalia's civil aviation sector. Somali police said at the time that an investigation had opened and that six people had been detained, but authorities did not publicly identify suspects or announce charges in the immediate aftermath, and, on the available reporting, still have not. After his body was repatriated to Somaliland, an examination at Hargeisa General Hospital found injuries doctors said were consistent with torture and strangulation, including a fractured jaw and injuries to his face and eye; examiners concluded he had been strangled with a rope. Dahable's family said he had received threats before his death and has accused NISA of pressuring and threatening him in the period beforehand, an allegation that, like the resolution's naming of Mohamud and Salad, has not been independently substantiated. Somaliland's foreign ministry condemned the killing within days of the discovery in 2024; what changed in September 2026 is that a sitting legislature, rather than a grieving family or a foreign ministry statement, has now formally attached the federal president's name to the case.

A death inside an airspace war

Dahable did not die in a political vacuum. His death came as Somalia's federal government and Somaliland's own aviation authority were locked in an intensifying dispute over who actually controls the skies above Somaliland. The Mogadishu Flight Information Region formally covers the whole of Somali airspace under the SCAA, but for years an informal post-2017 arrangement had let Hargeisa's own Civil Aviation and Airports Authority manage day-to-day traffic over Somaliland's territory in practice. That arrangement collapsed in 2024, removing the last practical buffer between the two sides' competing legal claims; a month before Dahable was found dead, on 17 January 2024, an unscheduled Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying senior Ethiopian officials to Somaliland was denied entry to Somali airspace and forced to turn back to Addis Ababa. Days after his death, in February 2024, Somaliland's aviation authority separately accused Mogadishu of misusing or diverting more than $60 million earmarked for air traffic management and airport development. The dispute has continued to harden since: from 10 November 2025, Somaliland has required its own Prior Permission Required clearance for flights, while Somalia has reaffirmed through an Aeronautical Information Circular that it controls the entire Flight Information Region and expects operators to follow its own aeronautical publications. Dahable, an SCAA employee from Somaliland working inside the federal aviation bureaucracy at the exact moment that bureaucracy's authority over Somaliland's skies was being actively contested, sat at the personal centre of an institutional fight neither government has resolved.

Two years, six detentions, no named suspect

What makes the resolution notable is less the accusation itself, which Somaliland officials and Dahable's family have voiced in some form since 2024, than the fact that two and a half years of silence from Mogadishu's own investigation is precisely what now licenses a national parliament to fill the gap with its own conclusions. Six detentions were announced at the time; none has been converted, on the public record, into a named suspect or a charge. Somalia's federal government has not, on available reporting, issued its own account of what its investigation into Dahable's death actually found or why it has produced no public outcome. That silence does not establish the truth of the resolution's specific allegations against Mohamud, Salad or the Civil Aviation Authority's director, none of which the resolution itself substantiates with evidence, but it does explain why a case initially treated as a criminal investigation has, two and a half years later, become a parliamentary vote naming a head of state.

The timing: a resolution two days before a rally at the UN's door

The resolution did not land in isolation from Somaliland's wider diplomatic push. On 23 September, two days after the vote, President Irro addressed a recognition rally at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza in New York, directly across from UN headquarters, an event cleared by New York law enforcement and timed to the UN General Assembly's high-level week, during which Irro has separately been pressing Washington on Berbera port access and potential basing rights in exchange for recognition. FIKIR Institute has tracked Somaliland's recognition campaign through a series of distinct pressure points this year, an August Washington visit that Mogadishu answered by sending a Somaliland-born deputy prime minister to argue only the federal government can speak for Somaliland's ports and coastline, a September offer of Berbera to Israeli and American forces, and a Taiwan dispute in which Irro rejected Chinese pressure to close Hargeisa's Taiwanese office. The Dahable resolution adds a different kind of argument to that campaign: not an offer of strategic access, but a formal legislative finding that Mogadishu's own president cannot be trusted with the life of a Somaliland citizen working inside his own government's bureaucracy. Whether or not foreign governments treat the resolution's unproven allegations as credible, its timing, arriving as opinion writers in outlets like Eurasia Review argued this same week that "Mogadishu's dysfunction is Somaliland's best argument" abroad, suggests Hargeisa is using it as exactly that.

What to watch

Three signals will show whether the resolution becomes more than a domestic political statement. First, whether Somalia's federal government responds at all, either by disputing the resolution's claims, disclosing what its investigation into Dahable's death has actually found since 2024, or continuing to say nothing, a silence that would itself become part of Somaliland's case. Second, whether any foreign government or international human-rights body Somaliland has directly appealed to, a category that includes the United States, EU member states and UN human-rights mechanisms, takes any public notice of the resolution, which would convert a Somaliland parliamentary vote into a live diplomatic liability for Mogadishu during the exact week Hargeisa is lobbying hardest for recognition. Third, whether the underlying airspace dispute that formed the backdrop to Dahable's death escalates further, given that neither side has shown any sign of resolving the Flight Information Region dispute that made a Somaliland-born SCAA employee's position inside Mogadishu's aviation bureaucracy a politically dangerous one in the first place.

Policy implications

For Somaliland, the resolution costs little to pass and gains a great deal rhetorically: a near-unanimous vote naming a sitting foreign head of state in an unlawful killing, whatever its evidentiary weaknesses, is a more visceral argument for why Somaliland should not be governed from Mogadishu than any port-access offer, and Hargeisa's own appeal to foreign governments and rights bodies shows it intends to use the vote that way. For Somalia, the absence of any public accounting of Dahable's case after two and a half years is now a diplomatic cost as well as a domestic one, arriving during a UN General Assembly session in which Mogadishu is already contesting Somaliland's claim to speak for its own coastline and ports; continued silence hands Hargeisa a free, renewable talking point every time the case resurfaces. For the aviation sector specifically, Dahable's death is a reminder that the Somalia-Somaliland airspace dispute is not merely a regulatory disagreement over Flight Information Region authority but one in which a Somaliland citizen working inside the contested bureaucracy has already died, a fact that will weigh on any Somaliland national considering federal aviation employment in Mogadishu going forward. For the wider Horn of Africa, the episode is a reminder that Somalia's federal government is fighting on two connected fronts at once, an external one over Somaliland's recognition bid and an internal one over its own investigative credibility, and that unresolved cases like Dahable's leave Mogadishu answering accusations abroad that it has not managed to resolve, or even publicly address, at home.