A Kenyan national with ties to a Somali terrorist organization has been sentenced for his role in a foiled plot to carry out a mass-casualty attack in the United States. Cholo Abdi Abdullah, 34, received two consecutive life sentences plus lifetime supervised release for planning to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into Atlanta’s tallest building, the Bank of America Plaza.
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The sentence was handed down Tuesday in federal court in New York following Abdullah’s November 2024 conviction on six terrorism-related charges. Prosecutors said the plot was orchestrated on behalf of al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based terrorist group affiliated with al-Qaeda and designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization since 2008.
According to court records, Abdullah joined al-Shabaab in 2015 after traveling to Somalia, where he underwent about a year of military-style training that included weapons handling, explosives, and covert tactics. Senior members of the group later selected him for an international operation aimed at executing a large-scale attack inside the United States.
In October 2017, Abdullah moved to the Philippines to attend flight school, working toward private and commercial pilot licenses. Prosecutors said his training—funded by al-Shabaab through extortion proceeds—included hundreds of hours of classroom instruction, simulator work, and live flight time. During this period, he regularly communicated with handlers, providing updates and researching airline security, cockpit procedures, and methods to carry out an attack.
The plot intensified in early 2019 after an al-Shabaab attack in Nairobi killed 21 people. Investigators said Abdullah researched Delta flights, cockpit security features, and identified Atlanta’s 55-story Bank of America Plaza as his intended target. The plan was stopped when he was arrested in the Philippines in July 2019 on local charges. He was later transferred to U.S. custody in December 2020, bringing the years-long plot to an end.[/read]