After dropping out of high school before his junior year, in 2000 he converted to fundamentalist Islam and adopted the Arab surname of Aljughaifi.
After being captured by Kenyan forces in January 2007, Maldonado was turned over to United States officials and brought back to the US by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
He was charged in a US District Court in February 2007 in Houston, Texas for receiving military training from a terrorist organization.
In November 2005, Maldonado moved with his family from Houston to Cairo, Egypt, at the request of his boss, who thought costs would be lower there.
According to statements that Maldonado gave to the FBI, he hoped to find an Islamic society, as he said he had not felt at home in Egypt.
Maldonado went on with Hammami to an Al-Shabaab training camp in southern Somalia,[3] in Kismayo, where he contracted malaria.
[7] The Boston Globe reports that an FBI affidavit asserts Maldonado took training in Somalia in bomb-making and military skills, taught by Al Qaeda experts, among others.
His wife Tamekia was with their daughters and was described as dying after a high fever, likely due to malaria, shortly before the group reached Kenya in January 2007.
[6] On January 21, 2007, Maldonado was captured by Kenyan military authorities as he went over the border from Somalia, seeking to escape invasion by Ethiopian and other forces.
[1] Maldonado's parents, now living in Londonderry, New Hampshire, have custody and Yolanda Cunningham sees the children frequently.
[6] In mid-February 2007 the United States federal government charged the 28-year-old[1] Maldonado in Houston with getting military training from a terrorist organization in Somalia,[2] including weapons, bomb-making and interrogation techniques.
His conviction was due to work by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, with members from the FBI and the Houston Police Department.