Federal authorities have arrested an 18-year-old man from the Twin Cities who is accused of plotting to carry out a mass shooting at the Mall of America. On Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, of Richfield, was charged with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit a federal crime of terrorism. Authorities say ...

An 18- year-old Richfield, Minn., man is facing a federal charge, accused of plotting to carry out a mass shooting at the Mall of America.

Aaron Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS

Federal authorities have arrested an 18-year-old man from the Twin Cities who is accused of plotting to carry out a mass shooting at the Mall of America.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, of Richfield, was charged with one count of knowingly receiving a firearm and ammunition in order to commit a federal crime of terrorism. Authorities say Mohamud was planning an attack for later this month at the megamall.

The records show: Mohamud was arrested after a nearly two-year investigation revealed that the man, a U.S. citizen raised by Somali parents, had expressed wanting to fight for terrorist organizations overseas or commit a terrorist attack in Minnesota.

According to a criminal complaint, Mohamud had exchanged hundreds of messages with an informant over social media apps such as TikTok, Telegram and Discord as he discussed whether to join the terrorist groups al-Shabaab or ISIS.

“I wanna get martyred inshallah,” one of his messages to the informant said, according to the charges.

After initially wanting to go overseas, Mohamud messaged in July that he didn’t have the money to travel to Somalia and said, “so i will do attack here,” according to the criminal complaint.

He was arrested Tuesday by the FBI in a Richfield parking lot after purchasing an AK-47 rifle, four magazines and 200 rounds of ammunition from an undercover officer whom he thought was a member of ISIS.

By the numbers: Including Mohamud, 282 people have been charged over ISIS-related activity since 2014, when it was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, according to a database run by the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) out of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Seamus Hughes, a senior research faculty member at NCITE, said terrorism cases have leveled off in the past few years and are, typically, much more labor intensive for law enforcement.

Our reporting shows that the complaint against Mohamud resembles other terrorism cases.

“A young man, terminally online, a lot of chat rooms, vacillates between wanting to travel overseas and join the fight to planning an attack here,” Hughes said.

The backstory: The recent charges recall similar investigations from more than a decade ago when a wave of Somali-Americans from Minnesota faced charges for wanting to leave the United States to fight alongside Islamic extremist groups. One major 2015 case led to indictments against 11 Minnesotans charged in a conspiracy to provide support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Prior to those, the Justice Department brought similar terrorism charges following an investigation into the disappearance of up to 20 local men who left the Minneapolis area and traveled to Somalia to train or fight with terrorist group al-Shabaab.

Local reactions: “I’m relieved that a horrific attack on Minnesota was prevented and grateful for the actions of law enforcement,” said Minnesota’s Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who also is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor of Minnesota, said she is grateful for the “heroic” work of law enforcement. “This shows why we continue to need major coordinated investments in anti-terrorism and local law enforcement to stop attacks like these,” she said. “Our state must take terrorism and violent crime head on, working with our federal law enforcement and local police departments to keep Minnesotans safe.”

Minnesota’s other sitting senator, Democrat Tina Smith, said she is “incredibly grateful” for state and federal law enforcement partners who foiled the plot before it could take place.

Republican Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Lisa Demuth said she’s grateful that law enforcement stopped a “potentially catastrophic ISIS-inspired terrorist plot. It’s frightening to know that a young person could be led down this path.”

What’s next: Mohamud made his initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright on Wednesday. He was appointed a federal defender and ordered to remain jailed ahead of an Oct. 19 detention hearing.

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