John Ashcroft

Nuradin M. Abdi was linked to another Ohio immigrant, Iyman Faris, who last fall pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for plotting explosions at the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and on a train bound for Washington.

The 32-year-old Abdi was arrested on immigration charges Nov. 28 and indicted on the terrorism charges June 10 by a federal grand jury in Ohio.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the case as the indictment was unsealed in Columbus. According to a government motion, Abdi and Faris "initiated a plot to blow up a Columbus-area shopping mall, and accepted bomb-making instructions" from other, unidentified conspirators.

Federal prosecutors alleged that Abdi lied on passport travel records and went to Ethiopia for "jihad training," which he planned to use to attack the United States.

Ashcroft revealed the case in the wake of recent warnings by top U.S. security officials that the al-Qaeda terrorist network was preparing attacks on the United States -- and that some of the terrorist attack plans on America were "90 percent" complete.

Abdi faces up to 80 years in prison and a half-million-dollar fine.

The Japan Times Weekly: June 19, 2004
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