A 55-Story Target: Al-Shabaab Operative Sentenced to Life for 9/11 Style Plot

A federal judge has sentenced Cholo Abdi Abdullah, an operative for the terrorist organization al-Shabaab, to life in prison for plotting a suicide mission intended to mimic the September 11 attacks. Abdullah, who was trained as a commercial pilot specifically to carry out a mass casualty event on American soil, was convicted of six counts including conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The sentence, handed down on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres, ensures that the operative will remain behind bars for the rest of his life.

The investigation revealed that this was not abstract extremism or an online fantasy. Instead, Abdullah was a highly trained operative dedicated to recreating horrific terrorist attacks on behalf of a vicious organization. He joined al-Shabaab, the official Somalia based affiliate of al-Qaeda, in 2015. After receiving training in weapons and explosives at safe houses in Somalia, he was assigned to a greater plan that focused on aviation. Between 2017 and 2019, Abdullah enrolled in a flight school in the Philippines, where he logged hundreds of hours of instruction. His training was funded by al-Shabaab through extortion money, and his goal was to obtain the credentials and cockpit access necessary to hijack a plane and crash it into a building.

By the time of his arrest in July 2019, Abdullah was close to finishing the requirements for his commercial pilot’s license. Federal authorities discovered that he had meticulously studied airline security, cockpit door vulnerabilities, and methods for smuggling weapons past security. He even researched seating layouts to determine which positions offered the best view of the cockpit. His online search history included Delta flights and the tallest building in Atlanta, with a specific focus on the Bank of America Plaza, a skyscraper standing over 1,000 feet tall.

Abdullah’s handlers used a 2019 hotel attack in Nairobi, which killed a U.S. citizen, as motivation for his mission. In his communications, he noted that the only successful hijackings after 9/11 involved a pilot already inside the cockpit, concluding that for the operation to succeed, we need a pilot in the cockpit. During interviews with the FBI, Abdullah admitted his intentions, stating he expected civilians to be killed and fully anticipated his own death. Officials stated that he was a man ready to die to murder Americans, and the plot was only thwarted through the relentless work of international law enforcement. Al-Shabaab has been a designated foreign terrorist organization since 2008 and continues to openly declare its intent to launch attacks against the United States.