The Somali ambassador to the United Nations, Abukar Dahir Osman, who is tied to a daycare company in Ohio under investigation in Washington, might have acquired an American citizenship fraudulently, according to a source in Somaliland. 

Ambassador Osman, who currently serves as the rotating president of the UN Security Council, first entered America in the mid-1980s and again in 1989. He claimed to be a refugee of a minority in Somaliland persecuted by the Somali regime at the time, a Somaliland ambassador at large who tweets under the name of Haggoogane, tells the Sun via text. 

Haggoogane, whose real name is Mustafa Osman but is unrelated to the ambassador, says that the current Somali UN ambassador was far from a refugee fearing extermination by the Somali regime. Instead, he tells the Sun, the UN ambassador was part of that regime in the late 1980s. “His job was to identify anyone the regime saw as a threat,” Haggoogane says.

Between 1960 and 1991 the government of Somalia killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Isaaq and others in Somaliland, which declared independence of Mogadishu in 1991.

Following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland last month, the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, visited its capital, Hargeisa, on Tuesday, and met with President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. After Israel became the first UN member to recognize Somaliland’s independence, Mr. Osman, the Somali UN ambassador, convened an “emergency session” of the security council. 

At Washington on Tuesday, the deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Service, Jim O’Neill, confirmed a rumor regarding the Somali ambassador, which has long been whispered in UN corridors.

“I can confirm public speculation that Ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman, Permanent Representative of Somalia to the UN and President of the Security Council, is in fact associated with Progressive Health Care Services, a home health agency in Cincinnati,” Mr. O’Neill wrote on X. “HHS has previously taken action against Progressive in response to a conviction for Medicaid fraud. More to come.”

Repeated calls to the Somali mission’s landline and its spokeswoman’s mobile phone were unanswered. At press time Ambassador Osman has not faced reporters at a UN area designated for reporters’ questions, where the council’s president appears frequently. Calls to a number listed on the Progressive Health Care Services’s websites were unanswered.

Mr. O’Neill’s disclosure adds to a growing scandal involving abuse of funds provided by Medicare and other U.S. agencies. It started with allegations involving Somali emigres in Minnesota, which led to Governor Tim Walz’s announcement on Monday that he would forgo another term. This is the first time, though, that the name of an official of Somalia is tied to such allegations. 

Like Mr. Osman, several representatives of foreign countries at Turtle Bay hold an American citizenship or permanent residency.

Haggoogan says that the Somali ambassador entered America under false pretenses. Back in the mid-1980s, he was charged with identifying “supporters of the Somaliand National Movement for arrests, torture or to be disappeared completely, as was the modus operandi of the regime at the time,” he says. Instead he presented himself as a refugee.  

Israel’s diplomatic recognition of Somaliland has rattled Mogadishu. “We are determined to advance with momentum the relations between Israel and Somaliland,” Mr. Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, wrote from Hargeisa on Tuesday. “We held significant discussions with the President and his senior government officials regarding the full scope of relations between us.”

Mr. Saar’s arrival was “the first such visit by a foreign minister in 34 years,” President Abdullahi wrote. The “milestone” move by Jerusalem, he added, “opens a new chapter of formal diplomatic relations, security, economic, and development cooperation, serving the mutual interests of both nations and contributing positively to peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.”

Diplomatic relations “between the two countries are not against anyone,” Mr. Sa’ar wrote. Yet sources in both countries acknowledge that Somaliland’s geostrategic location is crucial. It is located at the tip of Bab el Mandeb, a Red Sea strait through which more than 20 percent of world commerce travels between Asia and Europe. In the last two years, shipping there was constantly threatened by the Houthis in Yemen.