A Kenyan national identified as Cholo Abdi Abdullah has been charged with 6 counts of terrorism-related offenses as an operative of al Shabaab, including conspiring to hijack an aircraft to conduct a 9/11-style attack on the United States.

Abdullah was arrested in July 2019 in the Philippines on local charges, and was subsequently transferred on Dec. 15, 2020 in connection with his deportation from the Philippines to the custody of U.S. law enforcement for prosecution on the charges in the indictment.  

The defendant, 30, was allegedly working at the direction of a senior Al-Shabaab commander who was responsible for planning the 2019 DusitD2 Nairobi hotel attack. 

Acting U.S. Attorney for Manhattan Audrey Strauss said that he "obtained pilot training in the Philippines in preparation" of the attack.

"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 U.S. citizens and attacking the United States," 

Strauss said. "But we remain even more resolute in our dedication to investigating, preventing, and prosecuting such lethal plots, and will use every tool in our arsenal to stop those who would commit acts of terrorism at home and abroad."

The prosecutors said Abdullahi started planning the attack in 2016 under the direction of an al-Shabab commander who was also involved in planning a deadly attack in 2019 on a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya.

The State Department has designated the Somalia-based militant group al-Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliate, as a foreign terrorist organization.

As alleged in the Indictment, Abdullah was an al Shabaab operative who participated in a plot to hijack commercial aircraft and crash them into a building in the United States. 

Beginning in 2016, at the direction of a senior al Shabaab commander who was responsible for, among other things, planning the 2019 Nairobi hotel attack, Abdullah traveled to the Philippines and enrolled in a flight school there (the “Flight School”), for the purpose of obtaining training for carrying out the 9/11-style attack.  

Between 2017 and 2019, Abdullah attended the Flight School on various occasions and obtained pilot’s training, ultimately completing the tests necessary to obtain his pilot’s license. 

While Abdullah was obtaining pilot training at the Flight School, he also conducted research into the means and methods to hijack a commercial airliner to conduct the planned attack, including security on commercial airliners and how to breach a cockpit door from the outside, information about the tallest building in a major U.S. city, and information about how to obtain a U.S. visa.

Abdullah is charged with conspiring to provide and providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization (al Shabaab), conspiring to murder U.S. nationals, conspiring to commit aircraft piracy, conspiring to destroy aircraft, and conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.  

If convicted, Abdullah faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. 

Involved in the unsealing of the indictment were NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea, John C. Demers, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.