Somalia terror group operative convicted of planning 9/11-style attack on America
A federal jury has convicted an operative of a Somalian terrorist organization of conspiring to kill Americans in an attack modeled after the Sept. 11 hijackings.
Cholo Abdi Abdullah, 34, was convicted in New York on Monday of six charges, including conspiring to support the terror organization Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mijahideen, which is commonly known as Al Shabaab, and conspiring to murder Americans.
“The jury found that Cholo Abdi Abdullah, an operative of the terrorist organization al Shabaab, conspired to murder Americans in a terrorist attack reminiscent of the Sept. 11 attack on our country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. He added the “conviction ensures that Abdullah will spend decades in prison for his crimes.”
After training for months in Somalia with AK-47 rifles and explosives, Abdullah spent months at a flight school in the Philippines training to obtain a commercial pilot license and researched how to target tall buildings in U.S. cities, according to the indictment and evidence at trial. He also learned how to obtain transit vises to the U.S. and how to open a cockpit door from the outside.
His research mimicked the training of al Qaeda operatives who hijacked four U.S. airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania, killing a total of nearly 3,000 people.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in New York, whose office prosecuted Abdullah, called him “responsible for trying to replicate one of history’s most heinous acts of terrorism.”
“Abdullah relentlessly pursued his goals and was on the cusp of getting a commercial pilot license while conducting extensive attack planning, such as how to breach an airplane cockpit door,” Williams said.
Al Shabaab has sworn allegiance to al Qaeda and is responsible for its own deadly attacks since 2019, according to prosecutors.
After the U.S. moved its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Al Shabaab attacked a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2019, which resulted in the deaths of 21 people including a survivor of Sept. 11. Another attack in September 2019 was at a U.S. military facility in Somalia. And an attack in January 2020 at a U.S. facility in Kenya killed three Americans.
Abdullah is scheduled to be sentenced March 10. He faces a maximum term of life in prison for one of the charges: conspiring to commit terrorism across national borders, and a maximum of 20 years for others.
Source » msn.com
