A Muslim who trained in Somalia, Cholo Abdi Abdullah, was sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to commit a 9/11-style terrorist attack in the U.S.
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, John A. Eisenberg, and Assistant Director in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), Christopher G. Raia, made the announcement on Monday.
He was convicted for multiple crimes that included conspiring to provide—and providing—material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and conspiring to murder U.S. nationals, commit aircraft piracy, destroy aircraft, and commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said, “Cholo Abdi Abdullah was a highly trained al-Shabaab operative who was dedicated to recreating the horrific September 11 terrorist attacks on behalf of a vicious terrorist organization.”
“Abdullah pursued his commercial pilot license at a flight school in the Philippines while conducting extensive attack planning on how to hijack a commercial plane and crash it into a building in America. As he later admitted to the FBI, he was fully prepared to die in his terrorist attack. I commend the years of outstanding investigative work of the FBI and the career prosecutors of this Office who disrupted Abdullah’s murderous plot and brought him to face justice in a U.S. court. He will now spend life behind bars, where he will not be able to harm innocent Americans.”
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg noted, “Today, justice has been served.”
“Abdullah, an al-Shabaab terrorist, sought to replicate the most horrific terrorist attack in our history, as he prepared to hijack a commercial airliner to take down a building on U.S. soil. We thwarted this plot due to the relentless efforts of U.S. law enforcement and thereby likely saved many innocent lives. His life sentence is a powerful reminder that those who plot attacks against the United States will be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York:
ABDULLAH joined al-Shabaab in 2015 and spent approximately a year at a series of safehouses in Somalia where he worked with high-ranking al-Shabaab members and received military-style training that included how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle and how to make different sized explosives. During his training, ABDULLAH was recruited by senior al-Shabaab operatives for a “greater plan,” one that was “bigger than the fighting and the explosives.” Specifically, ABDULLAH agreed to join al-Shabaab’s international scheme to execute a mass-casualty terrorist attack, which would involve ABDULLAH training to become an airline pilot so that he could hijack a commercial plane and crash it into a building in the U.S.
Between October 2017 and July 2019, ABDULLAH became a student at a flight school in the Philippines and spent hundreds of hours training to become a commercial pilot. ABDULLAH’s flight school tuition was financed by al-Shabaab, which raises funds through an elaborate system of extortion in Somalia that it refers to as “taxation.” Images of ABDULLAH at the flight school are displayed below, with the instructors’ faces redacted:
During his enrollment, ABDULLAH participated in multiple training programs for his private and commercial pilot licenses, as well as to obtain the required ratings necessary to fly commercial aircraft. These requirements included hundreds of hours of classroom instruction, work in flight simulators, hands-on flight training, and written examinations. At the time of his arrest in the Philippines in July 2019, ABDULLAH had completed all but one of the requirements for his commercial pilot licenses and had nearly completed the “instrument rating” required to get a job as a pilot with a major airline.
Following his arrest, ABDULLAH admitted to FBI agents that he was training to become a pilot on behalf of al-Shabaab so that he could hijack a plane. As part of his attack planning, ABDULLAH had researched certain transit visas that would allow him to enter the U.S., tested the feasibility of taking a knife on board an airplane, and admitted that he expected others to be killed or injured when he hijacked the plane. ABDULLAH himself expected to die in the attack.
While training at the flight school, ABDULLAH continued to research his attack plans. ABDULLAH searched online multiple times for information concerning airplane cockpit doors, as well as airline jobs, instructor training, and possible interview questions for airline jobs. In December 2018, ABDULLAH searched for information concerning security on airplanes, including whether air marshals are on every flight, and “Boeing 737 cockpit door.” ABDULLAH visited websites discussing pilots carrying guns inside airplane cockpits, and viewed an article on how to open an airplane cockpit door from the outside.
In January 2019, ABDULLAH was briefed by his al-Shabaab handler about the DusitD2 Attack. ABDULLAH’s handler was a high-level al-Shabaab operative who coordinated the DusitD2 Attack and arranged for the use of a suicide bomber during the assault on the hotel and office complex. ABDULLAH admitted to FBI agents that his handler told ABDULLAH that his friend in al-Shabaab had died “for the cause” during the DusitD2 Attack, and that ABDULLAH and his handler used that as “encouragement” for ABDULLAH to become stronger. ABDULLAH then repeatedly searched online about the DusitD2 Attack, including for footage of the suicide blast. Just two days later, ABDULLAH accelerated his attack planning by researching “Delta flights,” and the “Tallest building in Atlanta,” specifically focusing on the Bank of America Plaza, a 55-story building standing 1,023 feet tall according to the website ABDULLAH visited as part of his research.
Throughout his flight training, ABDULLAH also provided his al-Shabaab handler with detailed progress reports that described his research and attack planning. In these reports, ABDULLAH described how he had taken flights to determine which airline seats had the best views of the flight deck door. ABDULLAH also compiled research on post-September 11 hijacking attempts and described how the “brothers during 9/11 did something completely unexpected in a more creative way, ‘study for piloting.’” In that same report, ABDULLAH concluded that “the only successful hijack after 9/11 was the one of the [E]thiopian [A]irlines and it is so because it was hijacked by the pilot himself.” ABDULLAH’s progress report then described a list of “My ideas” that ABDULLAH created and arrived at for a successful hijacking operation. His number one idea was that “for a very successful mission, we need a pilot in the cockpit (which means I should apply for the airlines).”
Before ABDULLAH could complete his commercial pilot license training and carry out the final, deadly steps of the Aviation Plot, he was arrested, in July 2019, by authorities in the Philippines. He was transferred to U.S. custody in December 2020.
As the massive fraud in the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota continues to unfold, renewed scrutiny is focusing on how much of the billions stolen from American taxpayers has gone directly into the hands of al-Shabaab terrorists.
An explosive investigative report by writers Ryan Thorpe and Chris Rufo reveals details on how American taxpayers in Minnesota are helping to fund terrorists in Somalia.
The Gateway Pundit reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed that the Treasury is investigating organizations and companies that shift money from one part of the globe to another.
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