11 September, 2017
A Maryland man on Friday pleaded guilty to conspiring to support the Islamist militant group al Shabaab, admitting that he traveled to Somalia to receive military training from the group.
The U.S. military says it has killed an al-Shabab extremist with a drone strike in Somalia. US AFRICOM confirmed that one Al-Shabaab fighter was killed without any civilian casualties. He is facing a minimum of 30 years in prison and a maximum of life.
Initially, he pleaded not guilty to five charges.
Jones was turned over to US authorities by Somali authorities, who arrested him in December 2015 as he allegedly tried to get on a boat to travel to Yemen.
Jones, who has been detained since his arrest in 2015, is scheduled to be sentenced in January, 2018.
Authorities said Jones trained with the group for three months, reading and interpreting the Koran and learning how to handle weapons, including an AK-47 and rocket-propelled grenades. Authorities say he confessed to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents that he fought Kenyan government soldiers in a battle until he was injured by a missile strike.
Al Shabab, a phrase that in Arabic means young people, emerged in 2006 as a radical wing of the now defunct Council of Islamic Courts, linked in 2012 to Al Qaeda and struggles to impose a caliphate based on Sharia or Islamic law.
