Nearly seven months have elapsed since an illegal immigrant from the Islamic Republic of Mauritania shot and wounded a visibly Orthodox Jewish man in the Chicago terror attack on October 26, then engaged police in a furious firefight while screaming the terrorist war cry “Allahu Akbar.”
It was the first known – and formally charged – terror attack on US soil by a foreign national who illegally crossed the southern border.
In a highly unusual move, the FBI under President Joe Biden didn’t seem to much care about the Chicago attack, ceding the public facing investigation to local police and the prosecution to Illinois officials, who used the state’s never-used 9/11-era state anti-terrorism statute to charge Mauritanian national Sidi Abdallahi, 22, with terrorism.
In a highly unusual move, the FBI under President Joe Biden didn’t seem to much care about the Chicago attack, ceding the public facing investigation to local police and the prosecution to Illinois officials.
The extraordinary stand-down by the nation’s chief counterterrorism law enforcement agency, just days before a national presidential election, veered sharply from norms, especially since Abdallahi’s recovered cell phone revealed an intense interest in jihadist ideology, extreme antisemitism, and resentment against Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
But before any FBI investigative role might have publicly emerged, Abdallahi hanged himself in Cook County jail, also ending chances for public understanding about what government border security agencies knew of his movements prior to the attack and what the FBI may have learned about him afterward.
But now, in response to a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI acknowledged that it did indeed open an investigation into the nation’s inaugural border-crossing terror attack and, more pertinently, that the investigation is still ongoing seven months after its sole defendant hanged himself.
“The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” the FBI wrote in a response declining to fulfill the CIS information request and saying it would close the request.
Abdallahi’s suicide ended any prospect of a trial that may have answered many lingering questions about his March 30, 2023 border entry from Tijuana, Mexico; the handling of his immigration status afterward; whether he had accomplices, and much more to include whether the FBI under Biden was investigating at all.
After the attack and in the months since, the bureau took a back-stage seat, publicly ceding an obvious terrorism case to local police and the state’s prosecutor who initially refused to call the case terrorism until it felt Jewish community pressure and lodged the state terrorism charge.
Upon learning from CIS that the FBI’s investigation was still open seven months after the terror attack, the victim’s wife expressed hope “that they find everything out, that they figure out what really happened.”
Retired FBI supervisory Special Agent James Conway, who worked on terrorism investigations for years at home and abroad on the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, speculated that the bureau may still be exploring whether co-conspirators that support Hamas helped or even directed Abdallahi in his Chicago attack.
Among much more that remains publicly unknown is how Abdallahi obtained the semi-automatic handgun he used in the attack.
“The main suspect is dead, but the big questions are: who are his co-conspirators, or was this part of a larger plot?” said Conway, who runs a private risk mitigation firm called Straife.
“Who might have funded him? Are there sleepers still out there laying low? They’re still looking at it. That’s a good thing.”
Abdallahi’s victim and the victim’s wife spoke exclusively to CIS in December about their ordeal, declining to be named for fear of drawing danger to the family.
Upon learning from CIS that the FBI’s investigation was still open seven months after the terror attack, the victim’s wife expressed hope “that they find everything out, that they figure out what really happened.
“Hopefully, they do uncover it so to prevent anything like this from ever happening again,” she said.
