DusitD2 attack and foiled 911-style terror raid with al-Shabaab

In the early 2010s, police officers, from time to time, would raid the Musa Mosque (or Masjid Musa) following intelligence reports that it was a hotbed of radicalisation. Inside the building were children and young adults, including the late controversial preacher Aboud Rogo, who was known for his involvement in radicalisation before he was killed on 27 August 2012.

All the adults were hauled into waiting police vehicles and charged, while the minors were let go.

Among those arrested was Abdi Abdulahi Cholo, also known in the streets as Majaz. Cholo is currently in a US jail, awaiting sentencing in March next year for plotting to execute another ‘9/11’ style terror attack.

He was born in 1990 and was in his early 20s when the attack occurred. After his release, the man from Isiolo went underground and crossed over to Somalia.

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The attack was a series of coordinated attacks carried out by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, in the US using four hijacked commercial planes.

The Saturday Standard can authoritatively reveal that he took a bus to El-Wak, Mandera County, and then illegally crossed into Somalia using a motorbike. Security agencies believe that the raid was the trigger for the radicalisation of the former Isiolo Boys High School alumnus and his subsequent membership in the al-Shabaab terror group.

Cholo’s story is tied to yet another man from Isiolo, the infamous Ali Salim Gichunge. Gichunge also crossed into Somalia and joined the terror group. When Gichunge completed his high school studies, he scored a grade C and wanted to pursue journalism. His mother, Sakina Mariam, did not have the money to send him to journalism school, so he got a job as a cybercafé attendant near their home in Kula Mawe, Isiolo County. Police believe this is where he became radicalised.

So good was Gichunge at his work that he received a salary raise, but what many did not know was that his skills would be the very thing that al-Shabaab would exploit to lure him into the Jihadi world.

In April 2015, Mariam left for a wedding in Kisumu, while Gichunge was in charge of the home. A call for a home update left her with more questions than answers. Gichunge had left for Mombasa, where he told her he had secured a job as a construction supervisor.

Mariam later said in a past interview that her son told her he stayed in Mombasa for a while before leaving for Lamu, where he settled for a few days before crossing over to Somalia.

The two were part of an 18-member team that had been trained and set loose to wreak terror.

It is said that the group was tasked with carrying out improvised explosive device (IED) attacks in Ras Kamboni to prevent the government from building a wall. They were also tasked with abducting tourists along the Coast.

Cholo was a brilliant child. Documents from the United States proceedings indicate that he studied media.

Al-Shabaab leadership had singled him out for aviation training alongside Rashid Mwalimu, a Kenyan militant who remains at large and is on the wanted list of authorities. The Directorate of Criminal Investigations issued a wanted alert for Mwalimu on March 31, 2021, approximately two years after Cholo’s arrest.

It is said that Cholo was the better pick compared to most al-Shabaab recruits, who tend to be largely illiterate.

The plot, according to security agencies, was to target Kenya, the United States, and the United Kingdom with a 9/11-style attack. This plan was so highly guarded that it was only known to Abu Ubeidah, the terror group’s leader.

Al-Shabaab spent between $80,000 and $100,000 to facilitate his education as a private pilot at All Asia Aviation Academy in the Philippines.

Cholo was arrested in 2019 in the Philippines,  with Kenya’s Anti-Terror Police Unit, the National Intelligence Service, and Philippine authorities playing a crucial role in tracking him down.

He was arrested months after Gichunge was killed by Kenyan elite security agencies during the 2019 DusitD2 hotel attack in Nairobi. Among those killed was a US national who was a survivor of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks.

The attackers were Mahir Khaled Riziki and Gabriel Simba, the suicide bomber. The others were Osman Gedi, Adan Mohamed Noor, and Siad Omar Abdi.

Riziki travelled from Somalia to El-Wak on January 11, 2019. He and Gichunge exchanged 22 calls in total.

Riziki was born on February, 5, 1993 in the Majengo area of Mombasa. Court documents show that he was involved in the killing of a police officer at the Royal Court Hotel in Mombasa in October 2014, then fled to Tanzania a month later.

The State then traced him to Somalia in 2015 after he called his family to inform them he was undergoing training with al-Shabaab.

On January 11, he crossed into Kenya and activated a Kenyan phone registered in the name of “Hibo Ahmed” that same morning, immediately placing a call to Somalia.

At 6:21 pm, Riziki placed his first call to the second attacker, the cell leader — Ali Salim Gichunge — and arrived at the safe house in Muchatha, Nairobi, later that evening. He exchanged 11 phone calls with Gichunge, including a final 91-second call at 3.25 pm. Riziki blew himself up outside while standing outside the Secret Garden restaurant within the DusitD2 hotel complex.

Gichunge managed to escape security’s radar for a long time because he communicated only with Somalia through Facebook and turned off his mobile phone whenever he met with his associates.

It was during the DusitD2 investigation that security agencies discovered that Cholo, like Riziki, had also crossed into Somalia. This led to a search for his whereabouts, as he had been under the radar for years.

As Gichunge was plotting in Kenya, Cholo was on a mission to hijack a commercial plane in a bid to crash it into a building in the United States. The court heard that the foiled plot was to replicate the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks. He was researching, among other things, the tallest buildings in major US cities.

Cholo had left Kenya for South Africa with Mwalimu, where they were to train as pilots. They joined the aviation academy towards the end of 2016 and early 2017.

Cholo did not know that US agents were monitoring his movements and activities in the country as he studied.

In court documents presented in the US, Cholo, in October 2018, visited a webpage that compiled jihadist propaganda material about al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks. In December of the same year, US authorities said that Cholo went online again to research, among many other things, the security of commercial airlines and how to breach the cockpit door from outside. Between January and February 2019, he was at it again, this time looking into how to obtain a US visa and researching aircraft hijackings.

Authorities claimed that he also sent encrypted messages reporting his progress to his al-Shabaab handler, including his extensive research on plane hijackings. The authorities claimed that the information he was seeking would be advantageous to al-Shabaab against the US and its allies. Cholo had already finished his training and was in the process of completing the tests necessary to obtain his pilot’s licence.

He was initially arrested in July 2019 in the Philippines, where he was charged and the extradition process began. Detectives found him in possession of weapons, including a pistol, a magazine, a grenade, bomb-making materials, and an improvised explosive device.

In December 2020, he was transferred to the US for prosecution on terrorism charges.

“This case, which involved a plot to use an aircraft to kill innocent victims, reminds us of the deadly threat that radical Islamic terrorists continue to pose to our nation,” said the then Assistant Attorney General for National Security, John C. Demers.

According to Demers, the arrest highlighted the US commitment to pursue and hold accountable anyone who seeks to harm the country and its citizens, adding that the US would go after terrorists no matter where they were located. “We owe a debt of gratitude to the detectives, agents, analysts, and prosecutors who are responsible for this defendant’s arrest,” he added.

Jill Sanborn, the FBI assistant Director for Counterterrorism, said that terrorist organisations were actively plotting, planning, and conspiring to commit acts of terrorism against the US, its interests, and foreign partners.

“Let there be no doubt that the FBI and our law enforcement colleagues, and in this case specifically those in the Philippines and Kenya, will not stop in our mission to hold terrorists accountable for their actions,” she said.

According to Sanborn, the charges Cholo was facing showed that, together with al-Shabaab, they intended to replicate the September 11 attacks, given al-Shabaab’s allegiance to al-Qaeda.

“The FBI, along with our US Government and international partners, will continue to work in lockstep against terrorism and will not allow the safety or security of the public to be threatened, no matter where in the world it may be or whoever is responsible.”

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He was charged with six counts relating to conspiring to murder US nationals, commit aircraft piracy, destroy aircraft, and commit transnational acts of terrorism, conspiring to provide, and provide, material support to a foreign terrorist organisation.

In the first count, he was accused of knowingly providing al-Shabaab with property, explosives, personnel, services, training, false documentation and identification, communications equipment, weapons, transportation, and expert advice and assistance, knowing that al-Shabaab was listed as a terror group in America.

In the second, Cholo was said to have, on or about October, 6, 2018, visited a webpage that compiled, among other things, jihadist propaganda about 9/11 attacks. He also, in or about December 2018, researched online, among other things, security on commercial airliners and how to breach a cockpit door from the outside.

“It was part and an object of the conspiracy that Abdi Abdullahi Cholo, the defendant, and others known and unknown, would seize and exercise control of an aircraft, inside the special aircraft jurisdiction of the US, by force, violence, threat of force or violence, and intimidation, and with wrongful intent,” the charges read in part.

This case gave the world an inside view of al-Shabaab’s quest to go global through an aviation attack.

The man widely regarded as the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, told US investigators that the planning of the attack started in the Philippines. He lived in Manila in the early 1990s together with Ramzi Yousef, his nephew, who was jailed for life for the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

On November 4, 2024, a jury unanimously found Cholo guilty on all six counts, and he is scheduled to be sentenced on 10 March 2025

“Today’s conviction ensures that Abdullah (Cholo) will spend decades in prison for his crimes. The Justice Department will never stop working to identify, investigate, and prosecute those who would use heinous acts of violence to harm the American people. It does not matter where terrorists hide; they will not evade the long arm of the law,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

From the conviction, Cholo could be jailed for life, as the six counts carry sentences ranging from a maximum penalty of 20 years to life in prison.

He is also expected to forfeit any assets or money in foreign jurisdictions or in America. Cholo is also to surrender anything that supports al-Shabaab activities and any money wired to enable him to organise the crime. The 34-year-old will be sentenced on 10 March 2025.