On December 16, the US District Court in the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment against a Kenyan member of al Shabaab, the Somalia-based, al Qaeda-affiliated terror group. The individual, Cholo Abdi Abdullah, stands accused of plotting to hijack an aircraft to conduct a 9/11-style attack on US soil.
Prosecutors allege that from 2017 until his arrest in July 2019, Abdullah completed flight training in the Philippines at the behest of al Shabaab. While the indictment does not state that al Shabaab gave Abdullah any specific country to target, the US seems to have been Abdullah’s objective, as he spent this time researching American skyscrapers and the US visa application process online.
Read more at the Hudson Institute
