Puntland authorities on Friday, 17 July 2026, carried out the execution of Ibrahim Ahmed Kooshin, who had been convicted of murdering Lieutenant Colonel Guuleed Abdulkadir Kadleeye, the commander of the Jarriiban District Police Station in Somalia’s Mudug region.
Lt. Col. Kadleeye was shot dead in Jarriiban earlier this week and was buried in the district on Thursday.
Local sources said the convicted gunman was believed to have links to pirate groups operating along the Puntland coastline.
According to Puntland authorities, police arrested Kooshin during a security operation shortly after the killing. On Thursday, a court sentenced him to death under the Islamic principle of qisas (retaliatory justice), following a request by the victim’s family.
The execution was carried out by a police firing squad on Friday morning in a public area.
Puntland officials and members of the public witnessed the execution, while the victim’s family exercised their legal right to authorize the sentence.
On Thursday afternoon, the families of both the victim and the convicted man exchanged the bodies of their deceased relatives, ahead of Friday’s execution.
Speaking to reporters after the execution, the mother of Lt. Col. Kadleeye said she had accepted her son’s death as the will of God and expressed satisfaction that the man responsible had been executed.
A large funeral for Lt. Col. Kadleeye was held in Jarriiban on Thursday, attended by Puntland government officials, security officers, and local residents.
The two men were reportedly close relatives, and less than 48 hours elapsed between the police commander’s killing and the execution of his convicted killer.
Lt. Col. Kadleeye had previously been trained by Turkish military instructors supporting Somalia’s Federal Government security forces. He later left the federal forces and joined the Puntland security services.
At the time of his death, he was serving as the police commander of Jarriiban, where security forces have recently intensified operations against pirate networks that have re-emerged along Puntland’s coast.
The pirate groups have been responsible for hijacking commercial vessels since last year, raising growing security concerns for the Puntland administration and international shipping in the region.