material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and conspiring to murder U.S. nationals, commit aircraft piracy, destroy aircraft, and commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries. Today’s sentencing followed Abdullah’s conviction after a jury trial that concluded on Nov. 4, 2024.
“Today, justice has been served,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “Abdullah, an al-Shabaab terrorist, sought to replicate the most horrific terrorist attack in our history, as he prepared to hijack a commercial airliner to take down a building on U.S. soil. We thwarted this plot due to the relentless efforts of U.S. law enforcement and thereby likely saved many innocent lives. His life sentence is a powerful reminder that those who plot attacks against the United States will be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Cholo Abdi Abdullah was a highly trained al-Shabaab operative who was dedicated to recreating the horrific September 11 terrorist attacks on behalf of a vicious terrorist organization,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. “Abdullah pursued his commercial pilot license at a flight school in the Philippines while conducting extensive attack planning on how to hijack a commercial plane and crash it into a building in America. As he later admitted to the FBI, he was fully prepared to die in his terrorist attack. I commend the years of outstanding investigative work of the FBI and the career prosecutors of this Office who disrupted Abdullah’s murderous plot and brought him to face justice in a U.S. court. He will now spend [decades] behind bars, where he will not be able to harm innocent Americans.”
“Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist and trained pilot Cholo Abdullah was justly punished today for his plotting to commit a 9/11-style terrorist attack,” said Assistant Director in Charge Christopher G. Raia of the FB. “This case serves as reminder individuals still wish to inflict violence upon our country in the name of the terrorism. The FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force remains steadfast in its relentless determination to protect the American people from terrorists and their heinous desires.”
According to court documents and the evidence at trial:
al-Shabaab
Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, commonly known as al-Shabaab, is a terrorist organization and al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia and active in other locations in East Africa. Since its formation, al-Shabaab has relied on violence, including assassinations, suicide bombings, armed assaults on hotels, restaurants, beaches, and an array of civilian targets to pursue its goals. Those goals include al Qaeda’s broader objective to overthrow the U.S. government and create an Islamic caliphate. In 2012, the then-Emir of al-Shabaab swore allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri, the then-Emir of al Qaeda who succeeded Osama bin Laden after his death in 2011, which led to al-Zawahiri announcing that al-Shabaab “will hereby merge into al Qa’ida.”. On February 26, 2008, the U.S. Secretary of State designated al-Shabaab as a foreign terrorist organization (“FTO”) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224.
Since its designation, al-Shabaab has repeatedly declared its intent to target the West and kill Americans. In April 2008, for example, in response to the U.S. designation of al-Shabaab as an FTO, al-Shabaab released a statement expressly declaring its intent to target the U.S. The next month, in May 2008, al-Shabaab publicly declared that its fighters would “hunt the U.S. government,” and threatened that governments supporting the U.S. and Ethiopia should keep their citizens out of Somalia. Consistent with its threats, al-Shabaab has repeatedly engaged in mass-casualty attacks targeting Americans.
al-Shabaab’s “Operation Jerusalem Will Never Be Judaized” Campaign
In May 2018, al-Shabaab announced that it would participate in an al Qaeda-driven campaign to retaliate against the U.S. for its decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, called “Operation ‘Al-Qudsu Lan Tuhawwad (Jerusalem will never be Judaized).'”. al-Shabaab subsequently claimed, in public statements, responsibility for multiple major terrorist attacks carried out under Operation “Jerusalem Will Never Be Judaized.”
One of al-Shabaab’s attacks was the Jan.15, 2019 assault on the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in Nairobi, Kenya (the “DusitD2 Attack”), which included, among other things, a suicide bomber detonating an explosive device in front of a U.S. citizen, killing him; and four other armed individuals attacking the hotel grounds with AK-47s and grenades, killing more than 20 additional people. al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack, and i a propaganda video explained that the DusitD2 Attack was “successful, by the grace of Allah, and resulted in the deaths of more than 50 disbelievers, including Americans and other Western nationals.”
Abdullah Joins the al-Shabaab Aviation Plot to Re-Create the September 11 Terrorist Attacks
Abdullah joined al-Shabaab in 2015 and spent approximately a year at a series of safehouses in Somalia where he worked with high-ranking al-Shabaab members and received military-style training that included how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle and how to make different sized explosives. During his training, he was recruited by senior al-Shabaab operatives for a “greater plan,” one that was “bigger than the fighting and the explosives.”. Specifically, he agreed to join al-Shabaab’s international scheme to execute a mass-casualty terrorist attack, which would involve Abdullah training to become an airline pilot so that he could hijack a commercial plane and crash it into a building in the U.S.
Between October 2017 and July 2019, Abdullah became a student at a flight school in the Philippines and spent hundreds of hours training to become a commercial pilot. Abdullah’s flight school tuition was financed by al-Shabaab, which raises funds through an elaborate system of extortion in Somalia that it refers to as “taxation.”. Images of Abat the flight school Abdullah are displayed below, with the instructors’ faces redacted:
During his enrollment, Abdullah participated in multiple training programs for his private and commercial pilot licenses, as well as to obtain the required ratings necessary to fly commercial aircraft. These requirements included hundreds of hours of classroom instruction, work in flight simulators, hands-on flight training, and written examinations. At the time of his arrest in the Philippines in July 2019, Abdullah had completed all but one of the requirements for his commercial pilot licenses and had nearly completed the “instrument rating” required to get a job as a pilot with a major airline.
Abdullah Agreed to Murder U.S. Nationals for al-Shabaab
Following his arrest, Abdullah admitted to FBI agents that he was training to become a pilot on behalf of al-Shabaab so that he could hijack a plane. As part of his attack planning, he had researched certain transit visas that would allow him to enter the U.S., tested the feasibility of taking a knife on board an airplane, and admitted that he expected others to be killed or injured when he hijacked the plane. He himself expected to die in the attack.
While training at the flight school, Abdullah continued to research his attack plans. He searched online multiple times for information concerning airplane cockpit doors, as well as airline jobs, instructor training, and possible interview questions for airline jobs. In December 2018, he searched for information concerning security on airplanes, including whether air marshals are on every flight, and “Boeing 737 cockpit door.”. He visited websites discussing pilots carrying guns inside airplane cockpits, and viewed an article on how to open an airplane cockpit door from the outside.
In January 2019, ABDULLAH was briefed by his al-Shabaab handler about the DusitD2 Attack. His handler was a high-level al-Shabaab operative who coordinated the DusitD2 Attack and arranged for the use of a suicide bomber during the assault on the hotel and office complex. Abdullah admitted to FBI agents that his handler told him that his friend in al-Shabaab had died “for the cause” during the DusitD2 Attack, and that Abdullah and his handler used that as “encouragement” for him to become stronger. He then repeatedly searched online about the DusitD2 Attack, including for footage of the suicide blast. Just two days later, he accelerated his attack planning by researching “Delta flights,” and the “Tallest building in Atlanta,” specifically focusing on the Bank of America Plaza, a 55-story building standing 1,023 feet tall according to the website he visited as part of his research.
Throughout his flight training, Abdullah also provided his al-Shabaab handler with detailed progress reports that described his research and attack planning. In these reports, he described how he had taken flights to determine which airline seats had the best views of the flight deck door. He also compiled research on post-September 11 hijacking attempts and described how the “brothers during 9/11 did something completely unexpected in a more creative way, ‘study for piloting.'”. In that same report, he concluded that “the only successful hijack after 9/11 was the one of the Ethiopian Airlines and it is so because it was hijacked by the pilot himself.”. His progress report then described a list of “My ideas” that he created and arrived at for a successful hijacking operation. His number one idea was that “for a very successful mission, we need a pilot in the cockpit (which means I should apply for the airlines).”
Before Abdullah could complete his commercial pilot license training and carry out the final, deadly steps of the Aviation Plot, he was arrested, in July 2019, by authorities in the Philippines. He was transferred to U.S. custody in December 2020.
As a result of this conduct, on November 4, 2024, Abdullah was found guilty at trial of six counts: conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison; providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; conspiring to murder U.S. nationals abroad, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison;. conspiring to commit aircraft piracy, which carries a mandatory minimum penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum term of life in prison; conspiring to destroy aircraft, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; and conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, which carries a maximum penalty f life in prison.
In addition to the prison term, Abdullah, 34, of Kenya, was sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release.
The National Security Division (NSD) praised the outstanding efforts of the FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, which principally consists of agents from the FBI and detectives from the New York City Police Department. NSD also thanked the FBI Counterterrorism Division; the FBI Legal Attaché Offices in Nairobi, Kenya, and Manila, the Philippines; the FBI’s Hudson Valley Resident Agency; the New York State Police; the Counterterrorism Section of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division; the Office of International Affairs of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division; the U.S. Department of Defense; the Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations, including the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit and the Joint Terrorism Task Force-Kenya; the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in Kenya; the Philippine National Police; the Philippine Department of Justice; the Joint Terrorism Financial Investigations Group-Philippines; and the Philippine Bureau of Immigration, for their assistance.
This case is being handled by the Office’s National Security and International Narcotics Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicholas S. Bradley and Jonathan L. Bodansky are in charge of the prosecution, with assistance from paralegal specialist Sabrina Jim Munoz and trial attorney John Cella of the Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Division.