A Timeline of Somali Terror Plots in America

"I only think about jihad everywhere I go”

At Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon, tens of thousands of people crowded around a massive Douglas fir tree decked with lights. Waiting for the carnage to begin was Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali ‘child’ refugee, who was dreaming of killing them all.

In 2010, Mohamud had urged a friend of his traveling to Mecca to pray “that I will be a martyr in the highest chambers of paradise.” He planned to attack Americans “in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays.” And Christmas was the perfect time of the year to do it.

While fathers lifted up their children on their shoulders and music filled the air, Mohamud was smiling for a different reason. “You know what I like, what makes me happy?” he had told undercover agents. As American families were enjoying the moment, the Somali Muslim was picturing their bodies ripped to shreds by his bomb. “You know, what I like to see? Is when I see the enemy of Allah, then you know their bodies are torn everywhere.”

Choosing a spot next to a light rail terminal, Mohamud waited for a train to arrive in order to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the families arriving at the ceremony. But instead of murdering thousands of people at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, he was arrested and dragged away while screaming, “Allahu Akbar.”

Somalis were disproportionately represented among the ranks of Islamic terrorists. The Battle of Mogadishu, in which Somali militias backed and trained by Al Qaeda terrorists, killed American soldiers and dragged their bodies through the streets, was one of the beginnings of the War on Terror. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, Al Qaeda’s Somalia boss, and the FBI’s third most wanted terrorist, had played a role in Al Qaeda’s 1988 bombings of American embassies in Africa.

There were at least four Somalis in Gitmo and numerous Somali terror plots in America. The Gitmo inmates included Guled Hassan Duran, a member of Al Qaeda, freed by Biden, whose official assessment stated that he had “personally surveyed Camp Lemonier”, a U.S. base in Africa, “for a potential truck bomb attack”, and had “participated in the planning of bombings” and “kidnapping Westerners in Somalia.”

The mass migration of Somalis to America led to a surge in domestic terrorist attacks.

In 2013, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, along with his mother and six brothers and sisters, were admitted as ‘refugees’ to America from Pakistan. After being resettled by Catholic Charities, the Artan family moved from Dallas, Texas to Columbus, Ohio, which had a large Somali presence.

Artan soon began complaining that he felt persecuted at Ohio State University for being a Muslim. He invoked Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al-Awlaki and warned, “if you want us Muslims to stop carrying out lone wolf attacks… then make peace with” ISIS.

The week that his project identifying ‘microaggression’ was due, he set off a fire alarm, drove his Honda Civic into the crowd of students rushing out of the building and began stabbing them with a butcher knife, then the Somali Muslim charged at a police officer and was shot and killed.

There had already been plenty of warning before these two attacks. In 2007, the FBI was tracking 20 ‘missing’ Somali men from the Twin Cities of Minnesota who were suspected of traveling abroad to join Al-Shabaab: a Somali Islamic terror group affiliated with Al Qaeda.

By 2010, 14 Somalis had been arrested or indicted. And these numbers would only grow.

Despite these efforts, the stream of Somali ‘refugees’ and their children leaving the United States to join Somalia’s Al Qaeda continued and was later estimated at over 40. Liban Haji Mohamed, who drove a cab in Virginia, left to join Al-Shabaab in 2012 and tried to recruit other Somalis in America to join him, became the FBI’s third most wanted terrorist.

Mohamed Hassan, a Somali Muslim in Minnesota, who left for Somalia to join Al-Shabab and became a recruiter for the group, had called for the attack on the Mohammed cartoon in Garland, Texas in 2015, which became the first official ISIS attack on America.

In 2002, Nuradin Abdi, a Somali refugee, who had moved to Columbus, Ohio, and tried to raise money for a Somali Islamist warlord, began plotting to shoot up and then bomb a mall. After efforts to claim insanity, he was tried and was later deported back to Somalia.

In 2013, four Somali immigrants, including an imam at a popular San Diego, California mosque, and the former president of the Somali Community of San Diego, were convicted of raising money for a Somali Al Qaeda affiliate. The Al-Ansar Mosque, which had formerly been the center of a Somali pyramid scheme fraud, was a converted church and is still operating. Somalis in San Diego rallied to support their imam and the accused terrorist funders.

“What we’re concerned about now is the Somali community here who are peaceful, hard working community members. We hope that they do not become demonized,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations(CAIR), an unindicted terror funding coconspirator, warned.

In 2016, Dahir Ahmed Adan, a Somali refugee who, along with his massive family, had been resettled in Fargo, went on a stabbing spree in a St. Cloud, Minnesota mall. The Somali refugee ran around the mall shouting “Allahu Akbar” and stabbed 10 people until he was shot.

This was the second Somali terror plot against an American shopping mall.

In 2018, Mohamed Abdi Mohamed, a Somali Muslim immigrant from Mogadishu, yelled antisemitic slurs and tried to run over Jews leaving evening Sabbath services at a Los Angeles synagogue. He had a Koran on the dashboard, a large knife, had tried to buy a gun and had been searching about celebrating 9/11. He was acquitted of attempted murder on the familiar pretext that he was ‘insane’ despite having previously been found competent to stand trial.

In 2019, three Somali men operating in Michigan were arrested while headed to Mogadishu. They had allegedly planned to kill non-Muslims in America using cars and trucks. “I want alot of this kuffar (non-Muslims) dead,” one wrote.

Meanwhile that same year in Tucson, Arizona, two other Somali Muslim refugees also proposed a truck attack and one of them indicated he also wanted to blow up the White House. “I love Jihad so much wallahi, I give my life jihad, I only think about jihad everywhere i go,” one told an FBI agent. “I want to be the behading person wallahi this kuffar (non-Muslims) I want to kill them so many I am thirsty their blood.”

In 2012, Salman Mohamed, a Somali, placed a fake 911 to lure Nashville police officers with a rifle and was shot and killed.

In 2024, a Somali man in Minneapolis was charged with having gone to Somalia to join ISIS and had sent around pro-ISIS rap lyrics, urging “hollow tips put a hole in your Catholic vest, and chop his head off let it rest on his Catholic chest” and “Fly through America on our way to shoot New York up.”

“If [that] is not islam then I don’t know wats Islam,” he messaged.

2025 was a busy year for Somali terrorist supporters in America.

Over the summer, the sister of a high-ranking Somali ISIS leader was sentenced for trying to invade America at the border and claim asylum. Her sister is already living in America.

In October, a Somali man in Minneapolis pled guilty to supporting ISIS and trying to travel to Somalia to join ISIS. He praised the Muslim terrorist behind the New Orleans ‘Car Jihad’ attack as “the legend that killed Americans.”

Finally in December, Cholo Abdi Abdullah, a Somali Muslim who, according to court documents had joined al-Shabaab, and was allegedly prepped to carry out a 9/11 style attack by training to become an airline pilot so he could crash a plane into an American building, was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.

Abdullah had been researching the “Tallest building in Atlanta,” specifically focusing on the Bank of America Plaza, a 55-story building with thousands of people inside.

The next terror plot might succeed.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.