A Kenyan man was on Monday, November 4 convicted for allegedly plotting a terror attack similar to the 9-11 bombing in the US.
Cholo Abdi Abdullah was found guilty on all six counts he was facing by a federal jury in Manhattan. Among the charges he faced included a conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organisation as well as conspiring to take out US nationals.
“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 B. Garland stated.
Evidence presented at the trial showed that Abdullah, 34, was working on behalf of Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mijahideen, commonly known simply as al-Shabaab, - a Somalia-based terrorist organisation.
According to the indictment, the suspect trained with the militia for six months in safe houses in Somalia, sharpening his skills with AK-47 assault rifles and explosives devices.
He also spent several months at a flight school in the Philippines in 2017 as he worked towards getting a commercial pilot license.
In his well-mapped plot, Abdullah also carefully researched how to get pilot jobs with the intention of eventually hijacking and crashing a plane into one of the towering buildings in the United States on behalf of Al Shabaab, which has sworn allegiance to al Qaeda.
The attack had been plotted for four years, according to federal prosecutors who rested their case last Thursday.
Abdullah, who chose to represent himself at the trial, appeared to have seemingly resigned to his fate after his conviction. According to court papers, the suspect did not intend to oppose any outcome of the trial because he strongly believed the 'US justice system was broken'.
After his conviction, the suspect now faces a minimum sentence of 120 years as three of the counts he was convicted of bears a minimum of 20 years behind bars. For two counts of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries and conspiring to murder U.S. nationals, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.
The 9/11 attacks remain one of the most devastating in US history, with at least 2977 people losing their lives while hundreds of thousands of others suffer from permanent scars - physically and psychologically.
In Kenya, security agencies have also grappled with the ever-lingering threat of terrorism, which has wreaked havoc in recent years. As a result, the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi consistently reminds U.S. citizens in Kenya to exercise caution since terror groups tend to target hotels, embassies, restaurants, malls and markets, schools, police stations, and places of worship.
