Man convicted in 9/11-style plot to kill Americans

A man accused of being a Somalian terror group operative has been convicted of a 9/11-style plot to kill Americans, the Justice Department said Monday.

The Justice Department said in a press release a 34-year-old Kenyan named Cholo Abdi Abdullah received a verdict of guilty Monday on six counts.

Justice said Abdullah was convicted of conspiring to provide, and providing, material support to a foreign terrorist organization; conspiring to murder U.S. nationals; aircraft piracy; destroying aircraft and transnational acts of terrorism.

Abdullah faces sentencing in mid-March, DOJ said.

Charges against Abdullah were first announced in late 2020 by federal prosecutors, and he was arrested in the Philippines in mid-2019 on local charges. He was later transferred to the U.S. in 2020.

In the press release, the Justice Department said Abdullah had been part of Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mijahideen, which the department labeled a “foreign terrorist organization” that is run out of Somalia.

“After training with al Shabaab for months with AK-47 assault rifles and explosives at a series of safe houses in Somalia, Abdullah participated in a plot to hijack a commercial aircraft and crash it into a building in the U.S.,” the department said in the release.

In the Philippines, Abudllah went to flight school for a period of months, according to the Justice Department, and tried to get a commercial pilot license.

Justice accused him of looking for work as a pilot, and of seeking to targets “such as the tallest buildings in a major American city." It also accused him of trying to learn how to "open a cockpit door from the outside.”

“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 September 11 attack on our country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the release. “Today’s conviction ensures that Abdullah will spend decades in prison for his crimes.

For the count of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, the DOJ said Abdullah could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The Hill has reached out to an attorney for Abdullah for comment.