By Mohamed Olad
Saturday March 7, 2026
What manner of man, having engineered a decade of systematic terror, believes he has a legitimate voice in the future of the very people he brutalized? What depth of delusion and narcissism is required for someone like Abdi Iley to assume he has earned the right to lecture anyone on governance, society, or peace? The pardoning of Abdi Mohamed Omar (Abdi Iley), the former president of Ethiopia's Somali Region, and his cynical attempt to resurrect his public image, is not merely a political scandal. It is a profound moral crisis that exposes the raw, unhealed nerve of impunity in contemporary Ethiopia.
Consider his recent rhetoric. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) dated December 12, 2025, Abdi Iley, the former president of the Somali Region, dared to lecture the very public he is accused of terrorizing. He wrote, in Somali: “Sidaas darteed, shacabka Itoobiya waa in ay ilaashadaan dowladnimadooda, oo ayna run u qaadan cadawga ugu soo dhex dhuumanaya cabashooyinka ay qabaan…waa in ay taageero buuxda u muujiyaan Dr Abiy Ahmed iyo xisbigiisa PP, isla markaana garab istaagaan qorshayaashiisa horumarineed …" (Therefore, the Ethiopian public must protect their statehood, and not believe the enemy hiding within their grievances...they must give full support to Dr. Abiy Ahmed and his PP party, and stand by his development plans...")
Who, exactly, are the ‘Ethiopian public’, anyway? The same Ethiopians who were slaughtered on the streets of Jigjiga or burned inside churches from Jigjiga to Degahbur and in between on August 4 2018 in what some described as the worst pogroms of Highlanders, or ‘Habeshi’, in the region?
This man—whose tenure is documented by human rights organizations for torture, extrajudicial killings, and mass displacement—now presumes to identify the nation's "enemies" and instruct citizens on patriotism. To hear him speak of “state building” and “nation building" is a grotesque obscenity. It is a profound moral crisis that exposes the raw, unhealed nerve of impunity in contemporary Ethiopia. His unwise pardon and his subsequent attempt to re-engage in public discourse are not merely a political scandal; if permitted to continue, they will become a declaration that impunity is a governing principle.
After presiding over a regime implicated in egregious human rights violations, his recent public maneuvers constitute an obscene second act. This pattern extends beyond hollow lectures on unity to direct, inflammatory attacks on his former victims. On February 9, 2026, Abdi Iley posted on X a statement that perfectly illustrates cruelty weaponized as commentary. He targeted Ibrahim Dhere, a prominent opposition figure in the Somali Region and former leader of the United Western Somali Liberation Front (UWSLF), which laid down its weapons after signing a peace agreement with the Ethiopian government in 2011. In a post dripping with malice, Abdi Iley asked: “When did Al-Shabab turn into FEP (Freedom and Equality Party)?". It’s worth remembering that FEP is a nationally registered political party that Mr. Dheere is just a member of.
This is not political discourse. This is a man, free and unrepentant, using a public platform to brand a former armed group that chose peace as a current terrorist organization. He is directly taunting a political rival by linking him to Al-Shabab, a designation that in the current climate could have severe consequences. It is a stark manifestation of a system that has deferred justice, allowing the perpetrator to become a provocateur, using the specter of terrorism to attack those who chose peace but once fought against the very state he now claims to champion.
When survivors and civil society organizations dared to decry his re-emergence in public discourse—when they voiced how his opining on everything from politics to peace, and from ruling party policies to opposition tactics, was reopening painful, unhealed wounds—his response was not one of contrition or even silence. It was offensive. In a subsequent post, he lashed out at his critics, dismissing victims' associations and former armed groups—the very people in whose name he is accused of building a well-oiled atrocity machine. He labeled them, with contempt, as “despicable propaganda megaphones whose God's only providence to earn a living is to insult him."
This single statement is a damning indictment of his character and his intentions. It reveals a man who views the legitimate grievances of survivors as a mere livelihood project, a cynical enterprise of "insult" rather than a cry for justice. It exposes his complete inability to comprehend the suffering he is accused of inflicting. To the mothers of the disappeared, to the families of the extrajudicially killed, to the thousands displaced by the violence of his Liyu Police, he offers not acknowledgment, but mockery. He reduces their trauma to a profession: "insulting him." This is not the behavior of a man seeking reconciliation; it is the behavior of a tormenter who believes his freedom grants him the right to degrade his victims anew.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's controversial pardon in March 2024, documented by Human Rights Watch, was granted in the spirit of a fraught national reconciliation. However, it appears to have been catastrophically misconstrued. It was a fragile political concession as part of national reconciliation, not a license for renewed psychological warfare. The February 9th taunt against Ibrahim Dheere and the subsequent dismissal of victims as "despicable propaganda mega-phones" are clear examples of this warfare in action. Allowing this man to publicly taunt and degrade those he tormented is not reconciliation; it is a betrayal of the victims and a mockery of reform.
This pattern of moral evasion extends alongside his cynical political calculus. He simultaneously sprinkles flattering words on federal figures—as seen in his February 2026 post praising Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as “aad u caqli iyo aqoon badan" (very intelligent and knowledgeable)—as if to purchase a certificate of "good Ethiopian" citizenship. With this hollow credential in hand, he then attempts to disparage the Somali people's legitimate struggle and attack his opponents. This is the apex of bad faith: aligning himself with new centers of power to sanitize his past, erasing a legacy of bloodshed with strategic compliments while using his newfound platform to settle old scores and mock the survivors.
His logic is a profound insult to the intelligence and memory of the Oromo people, the Somali people, and all Ethiopians. He operates under the grotesque assumption that communities can be pacified with rhetoric, that the deep, generational wounds of mass deportation, ethnic displacement, and state-sanctioned violence can be sutured by a well-placed platitude.
The Oromo people cannot forget the pogroms and brutal displacements his Liyu Police were implicated in, as documented in academic analyses from institutions like the LSE as is the Somali people. Their memory is not a ledger to be balanced with words; it is a living, painful truth etched into their collective being. To call their voices "despicable propaganda mega-phones" is to attempt to erase that truth.
Therefore, his attempt to encroach on public debate is an act of aggression. His post of December 2025, instructing citizens to ignore their grievances and support the government, and his subsequent dismissal of survivors as professional insult-hurlers, are the final phase of the abuse—the phase where the alleged torturer seeks to control the narrative, silence the cries for justice, and reframe the victims as the aggressors. A nation cannot heal under these conditions. True reconciliation demands accountability, not amnesia; it demands that the dignity of victims be placed above the comfort of perpetrators.
The demand, then, is clear and urgent: The Ethiopian government and all institutions of civic morality must reject this charade. Abdi Iley's rightful place is in a court of law, answering for his crimes, not on a media platform opining on politics or taunting his victims. To allow him to continue is to tell every victim of August 4 and every dark day that followed that their suffering was incidental, and that their tormentor's voice will always matter more than their silence. This cannot stand. The only words he should be permitted to utter in public are these: "I am guilty." Until then, his voice is nothing but the echo of an unforgivable past, drowning out any possibility of a just future.
Editor’s Note: Mohamed Olad is a former Somali Regional State official, journalist, and political analyst. He can be reached at [email protected].
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Hiiraan Online’s editorial stance.
