El Ali’s Meteorite Was Not “Discovered.” It Was Stolen.
In early 2020, one of the largest meteorites ever found on Earth vanished from Somalia’s Hirshabelle region. What followed was not a mere scientific triumph or a lawful commercial transaction, but a textbook case of cultural theft—masked by false narratives, fabricated paperwork, and lethal violence against an Indigenous community.
The meteorite, known locally as Shiid Birood, had rested for centuries—likely millennia—in El Ali. For generations, the Indigenous community used it as an anvil and a source of iron. Its surface bears unmistakable evidence of that history: hammered facets extending deep below ground, testimony to long-standing possession and cultural use. This was not an unclaimed object. It was a living heritage site.
Yet after its violent removal, the stone was reborn in official documents as something else entirely.
According to a carefully crafted story circulated to foreign buyers and institutions, the meteorite was “discovered” in early 2020 by gemstone prospectors near Beledweyne. The prose was cinematic. It was also false. At least six Somali media outlets had already reported—weeks earlier—that the stone had been forcibly taken from its impact site after clashes with local residents. Members of the El Ali community were killed defending it.
The alleged owners (Nur – From Habargidir clan & Abdirahman – From Marihan Clan whose clan resides a thousand kilometre away from El Ali) allege the ownership of the meteorite, Abdirahman has reportedly said; ¨I drove alone my car from Garbaharey to El Ali and persuaded Alshabab that i wanted to get rid of that useless stone, called -Shiid Birood-¨, claiming that no one owned the meteorite, but these questions remain and wait for honesty answers – How can Abdirahman drive his own car through alshabab controlled territories without being a respected member of Alshabab and also remove -Shiid Birood- without prior notification and deal with alshabab ? Was previlleged because he belonged to then president´s clan and was alshabab member ?
One strange thing that happened during the research by human rights defenders and the lead US scientist (Nick) was all of them faced cyber attacks perpetrate by Nur and Abdirahman relying on alshabab´s cyber unit to undermine their work and fight for the rights of the indigenous community of El Ali.
This was not discovery. It was dispossession.
The falsehoods did not stop there. The companies and individuals claiming ownership produced licenses and permits riddled with irregularities. Most glaringly, the GPS coordinates submitted to authorities do not point to Hirshabelle at all, but to Qandala, a fishing village on the Gulf of Aden—hundreds of kilometers away. No valid prospecting permit has ever been produced for Hirshabelle, the meteorite’s actual location.
These are not bureaucratic errors. They are deliberate distortions designed to sever the meteorite from its people.
Export documents further shrink the truth. The object is first described as a “meteorite stone,” then a “meteorite rock,” and finally reclassified as a “sample”—a term that legally implies no commercial value. This, despite the same actors openly marketing the meteorite for millions of dollars. A stone once priced at $200 million suddenly became, on paper, worth nothing at all.
One individual now claims sole ownership, asserting he paid $1 million for the meteorite and another $500,000 “to Somalia.” When asked who owned it before him, he answered: “No one.”
The meteorite itself refutes that claim.
Its worked surface is physical proof of ownership by possession—recognized not only in anthropology, but in legal theory and customary law. The sellers understood this perfectly. That is why samples were taken only from the buried, unworked underside of the stone—the only part untouched by Indigenous hands.
Most disturbing is what made this theft possible. The meteorite was removed from an area now controlled by Al-Shabaab, which prohibits access to the impact site. Yet the stone moved smoothly through state bureaucracy: licensed, exported, rebranded. This raises a question Somali authorities have yet to answer: How did a cultural object extracted amid armed conflict pass so easily through official channels?
State complicity does not always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it appears as false coordinates, missing permits, and willful silence.
Scientists involved in studying Shiid Birood have consistently argued that it should remain intact in a public institution, with its provenance fully acknowledged. But provenance is precisely what the sellers cannot provide—because the truth leads back to El Ali, to Hirshabelle, and to a community that paid in blood.
The greatest theft here is not only of a meteorite. It is the attempted erasure of Indigenous history, the laundering of violence into paperwork, and the transformation of cultural heritage into a commodity stripped of its past. Shiid Birood fell from the sky thousands of years ago.
Its removal in 2020 tells us everything about the present.
And the stone remembers who held it first.
By HANAHR Online Editor