Christopher Paul is an American convert to Islam and member of al Qaeda, who has pled guilty to acts of terrorism. He is currently serving a 15 year prison term arising from those charges.
Born Paul Kenyatta Laws, he changed his name to Abdulmalek Kenyatta in 1989, but then to Christopher Paul in 1994. He pled guilty to planning terrorist attacks in a plea agreement that calls for a 20-year prison term. He had been indicted on April 12, 2007 on the following charges: conspiring to support terrorists, conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and providing support to terrorists. He was charged with planning to set off bombs in Europe and the United States.
He received training from al-Qaeda in the early 1990s in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is reported to have stayed in the Beit ur Salam guesthouse, a guest house reserved exclusively for graduates of Al Qaeda training camps. Then in 1999 he went to Germany to train terrorists planning to attack Americans at overseas resorts. He was also alleged, in August 2002, to have met two other men in a suburban Columbus coffee house where they discussed terrorist attacks. The other two men were convicted of separate acts: Nuradin Abdi for a plot to blow up an Ohio shopping mall, and Iyman Faris for a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.
Paul is an American citizen, resident of Columbus, Ohio.