A Kenyan man with links to a Somali terrorist group was charged by federal prosecutors with planning a 9/11-style attack after he took flight training in the Philippines and researched ways to hijack an airliner, the New York Times reports.
Prosecutors claim Cholo Abdi Abdullah is an alleged operative of Shabab, the Somali terrorist group which aligns itself with al Qaeda. Abdullah was arrested in the Philippines by Filipino authorities last year and transported to the US to face charges. He is expected to be arraigned in federal court Wednesday.
Abdullah reportedly started pilot training in the Philippines in 2016, and had been directed by a leader of Shabab to probe US airports for security vulnerabilities in a plan to steal or hijack a private plane and fly it into a building.
Abdullah researched the tallest building in various cities to attack. Prosecutors have not released which cities Abdullah researched.
After the attacks on September 11, 2001, airport and airplane security was increased dramatically to prevent another similar incident. However, private planes still have significant vulnerabilities. In 2010, anti-government radical Andrew Joseph Stack flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, presumably because he was being audited by the IRS.