The US government has arrested and charged a Kenyan based in the US over terrorism charges.
The Kenyan man identified as Cholo Abdi Abdullah, 30, was charged with six counts of terror-related crimes which he executed as an Al-Shabaab operative.
According to Daily Nation, Abdullah’s last operation was to hijack an aircraft to carry out a terror operation in the US but was arrested in July 2019 by Philippine authorities who then deported to the US sometime in December 2020.
He was first presented in a federal court before Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger in Manhattan and the case was later assigned to United States District Judge Analisa Torres.
Audrey Strauss, the Acting Manhattan US Attorney General, said Abdullah was in the Philippines where he got pilot training with the intent to hijack a commercial plane and “crash it into a building in the United States” reminiscent with the 9/11 terror attack by Al-Shabaab in 2001.
Strauss added: “This chilling callback to the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, is a stark reminder that terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab remain committed to killing US citizens and attacking the United States.”
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney Jr said that added that Abdullah got pilot training with the sole intent to carry out his hijacking plan which a multi-agency team got wind of and stopped.
“He obtained a pilot’s license overseas, learning how to hijack an aircraft for the purpose of causing a mass-casualty incident within our borders.
Fortunately, the exceptional work by the men and women assigned to the many agencies that comprise the FBI’s New York JTTF have, once again, disrupted a threat to our communities,” Sweeney Jr said.
Abdullah enrolled for the training in 2017 and completed his training in 2019. He was awaiting his pilot’s license.
While in Flight School, he conducted extensive research on how to hijack a commercial plane and mapped put his target which would be the tallest building in one of the major cities in the US.
He also studied the methods on how to breach security on the plane.
The US remains a prime target for various terrorist organizations who have targeted US nationals home and away.
Recently, Al-Shabaab, a terror network linked to Al-Qaeda released a video with the faces of five gunmen who unleashed terror of a complex in Kenya’s capital Nairobi – DusitD2 – and said it was retaliation on the US government for supporting the accreditation of Jerusalem in Israel as the Jews capital.
With his indictment, he faces a lengthy prison term with the minimum sentence carrying 20 years.
