In December 2016, Isiolo-born Cholo Abdi Abdullah enrolled in a flight school in the Philippines at the direction of a senior Al-Shabaab commander who was responsible for planning the January 2019 Dusit D2 hotel attack in Nairobi.
Before this, Mr Abdullah, 30, had left his digital footprints, having searched “Al-Qaeda propaganda around the September 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001. Between 2017 and 2019, Mr Abdullah attended the flight school on various occasions and obtained a pilot’s training licence, ultimately completing the tests necessary to obtain his pilot’s licence.
But, unknown to him, intelligence agent from the United States had been on his trail. All through his flight school training, Mr Abdullah was being watched, all his moves recorded. Everything he did, including the sites he visited online were being tracked, as was his “new interest in aircraft”.
On Wednesday, he was formally charged in New York with six counts of terrorism-related offences arising from his activities as an al-Shabaab operative, including conspiring to hijack aircraft so as to conduct a 9/11-style attack in the United States.
Mr Abdullah was arrested in July 2019 in the Philippines and was transferred to the US on Tuesday.
Militants’ quest
The indictment blows open the Al-Shabaab quest for international attention as the Islamist group tried to pull off one of the biggest post 9/11 attacks in the US.
On October 8, 2018, while Mr Abdullah was training as a pilot, he logged on to a website that compiled propaganda around the 9/11 attack in the US, said the indictment.
In December of the same year, he once again logged in, researching on the security of aircraft, and particularly, how to breach the cockpit door of a commercial airliner.
In January last year, Mr Abdullah was researching on the tallest buildings in a major city in the US.
The next month, he was back again on the web, researching on how to obtain a US visa, and information on “aircraft hijackings”.
Throughout his searches, FBI agents were watching, and armed with enough evidence, they prompted his arrest in the Philippines on July 1, 2019.
During his arrest inside room 28 of Rasca Hotel in Iba, Zambales, he was found in possession of deadly weapons, including a 9mm pistol with a loaded magazine, an improvised explosive device, an MKZ hand grenade and bomb-making material.
“We received foreign intelligence reports about Mr Abdullah, who they believe has been a member of the terrorist group since 2012. The reports described him as dangerous. The intelligence reports assisted the police in pinning down where he was staying and that they were worried he might have links to local terrorist groups,” Philippines Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) Major General Amador Corpus said at the time of his arrest.
Life sentence
Mr Abdullah is now charged with conspiring to provide, and providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation (al-Shabaab), conspiring to murder US nationals, conspiring to commit aircraft piracy, conspiring to destroy aircraft, and conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.
He faces a maximum life in prison sentence, and a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years.
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney Jr said “nearly 20 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there are those who remain determined to conduct terror attacks against United States citizens.
“He obtained a pilot’s licence overseas, learning how to hijack an aircraft for the purpose of causing a mass-casualty incident within our borders. Fortunately, the exceptional work by our intelligence team, once again, disrupted a threat to our communities.”
“This case, which involved a plot to use an aircraft to kill innocent victims, reminds us of the deadly threat that radical Islamic terrorists continue to pose to our nation. And it also highlights our commitment to pursue and hold accountable anybody who seeks to harm our country and our citizens. No matter where terrorists who plan to target Americans may be located, we will seek to identify them and bring them to justice,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers.
“We owe a debt of gratitude to the detectives, agents, analysts, and prosecutors who are responsible for this defendant’s arrest.”
Al-Shabaab’s choice of the Philippines for Mr Abdullah’s flight training is telling, given that the country has previously been a launching pad for deadly attacks.
The accused al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, told his interrogators that the plot to attack New York and Washington DC, was first mooted in the Philippines.
Mohammed lived in Manila in the 90s, together with his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who is serving life in prison for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.