Kenyan man convicted in New York of plotting 9/11-style attack on US

A Kenyan man was convicted on Monday of plotting a 9/11-style attack on an American building on behalf of the Al-Shabaab terror group.

Cholo Abdi Abdullah, 34, was found guilty on all six counts he faced for conspiring to hijack an aircraft and crash it into a building by a federal jury in Manhattan, the US state department of justice said in a statement.

Abdullah was charged with conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation and conspiring to murder US nationals, commit aircraft piracy, destroy aircraft, and commit transnational acts of terrorism.

"The jury found that Cholo Abdi Abdullah, an operative of the terrorist organisation Al-Shabaab, conspired to murder Americans in a terrorist attack reminiscent of the September 11 attack on our country. Today's conviction ensures that Abdullah will spend decades in prison for his crimes. The Justice Department will never stop working to identify, investigate, and prosecute those who would use heinous acts of violence to harm the American people. It does not matter where terrorists hide; they will not evade the long arm of the law," Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said.

Abdullah now faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. He is scheduled for sentencing on March 10, 2025.

According to US Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York, Abdullah trained with Al-Shabaab for months in Somalia to become a deadly terrorist, before spending additional months at a flight school preparing to hijack a commercial aircraft and crash it into a building in the United States.

Court documents cited in the statement indicate that Abdullah trained with Al-Shabaab for months, using AK-47 assault rifles and explosives in a series of safe houses in Somalia.

He subsequently spent months at a flight school in the Philippines, working towards a commercial pilot licence and researching how to obtain pilot jobs, potential targets such as the tallest buildings in a major American city, transit visas to the US, and how to open a cockpit door from the outside.

"Abdullah also sent encrypted messages reporting his progress to his Al-Shabaab handler, including his extensive research on post-September 11 hijackings," the statement added.

The Al-Shabaab terror group has been targeting American interests both within the country and abroad, including in the East African region, as part of a heightened campaign since 2019. This operation, dubbed "Operation Jerusalem Will Never Be Judaized," was in response to the US decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

"These terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al-Shabaab included an attack on January 15, 2019, at a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 21 people, including a US national and survivor of Al Qaeda's September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York; a 30 September 2019, attack on a US military facility in Somalia; and a January 5, 2020, attack on another US facility in Kenya, in which three Americans were killed," the statement added.

The documents show that Abdullah was convicted of conspiring to commit aircraft piracy, carrying a mandatory minimum penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life imprisonment; conspiring to destroy aircraft, carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; and conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

"Abdullah relentlessly pursued his goals and was on the cusp of obtaining a commercial pilot licence while conducting extensive attack planning, such as how to breach an aeroplane cockpit door. I commend the tireless work of our federal law enforcement partners and the career national security prosecutors of this office. This effort has been carried forward by generations of agents and prosecutors who never relented in their mission to bring Abdullah to justice and keep this nation safe. Thanks to their work and today's verdict, Abdullah will now serve a lengthy sentence in federal prison," the Attorney said.

The case was successfully investigated with assistance from FBI legal attaché officers in Nairobi and Manila, as well as Nairobi’s Anti-Terror Police Unit, among others.