
Edward Schimenti (born 1982), also known as Abdul Wali, was an American Islamic State sympathizer who was arrested on 13 April 2017 for planning out an attack on a naval base alongside Joseph Jones.
Biography[]
Edward Schimenti was born in Zion, Illinois in 1982 to a family of Albanian descent, and he became a radical Islamist while working in "customer services". Schimenti and Joseph Jones became Islamic State sympathizers, and they attended a gym to acquire "combat fitness" so that they could carry out a terrorist attack in the United States. The FBI began to investigate the two men in 2015, and Schimenti was evicted from a Black Lives Matter rally for telling protesters to kill policemen and blow up a police station. On 13 April 2017, Schimenti and Jones were arrested at the O'Hare International Airport in Chicago after dropping an FBI informant off at the airport, believing that he was going to Syria to fight for the Islamic State. It was later discovered that the two men had intended to attack a US Navy base in the USA, and their arrests prevented the attack from taking place.