Kenyan man Cholo Abdi Abdullah was convicted on Monday for plotting an attack on a US building in a similar fashion as executed during the 9/11 attack.
The man was found guilty by the federal jury in Manhattan for all six counts against him. The indictment report showed that he was conspiring to hijack an aircraft and crash it into a building on American soil.
Additionally, he faced charges of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organisation.
“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,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
Documents presented at the trial indicated that the 34-year-old worked on behalf of Al-Shabaab, who have pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda. Federal prosecutors said Abdullah plotted the attack for four years, undergoing extensive training in explosives and how to operate in secret and avoid detection.
He worked with lethal weaponry such as AK-47 rifles and explosive devices. He was also a trained pilot who had attended a flight school in the Philippines in 2017, working towards getting a commercial pilot’s license.
Abdullah had a detailed plan to secure a pilot job with the intention of hijacking a plane and crashing it into a tall building in the United States on behalf of Al-Shabaab.
Prosecutors told the court that he had searched on how to breach a cockpit door and information about the tallest building in a major U.S. city before getting caught.
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During the trial, Abdullah chose to represent himself and seemed resigned to his fate after being convicted. Court documents indicated that he did not plan to fight the trial’s outcome, believing that the U.S. justice system was broken.
He is due to be sentenced in March next year and faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison.
“Today’s conviction ensures that Abdullah will spend decades in prison for his crimes. The Justice Department will never stop working to identify, investigate, and prosecute those who would use heinous acts of violence to harm the American people. It does not matter where terrorists hide, they will not evade the long arm of the law,” said the Attorney General.
