IS member sentenced to 20 years for aiding group behind Kabul airport bombing

Mohammad Sharifullah sat in a federal courtroom in Virginia on Wednesday as a judge handed down a 20-year prison sentence. The 28-year-old had been convicted in April of providing material support to Islamic State Khorasan Province, the Afghan affiliate of the broader IS network. He would serve the maximum penalty allowed for his single count. What he would not be convicted of, despite prosecutors' efforts, was direct involvement in the suicide bombing at Kabul airport on August 26, 2021—the attack that gave the case its weight and its urgency.

On that day five years earlier, a bomber detonated an improvised explosive device near Abbey Gate, one of the entry points to Hamid Karzai International Airport. US troops were conducting an evacuation operation as the American military withdrew from Afghanistan. Thirteen service members died in the blast. Roughly 160 Afghan civilians were killed as well. The attack became one of the deadliest moments of the entire withdrawal, a symbol of the chaos and vulnerability that had defined those final weeks. Prosecutors alleged that Sharifullah had scouted a route to the airport for the operation, though they could not convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that he bore direct responsibility for the deaths.

The jury deadlocked on that crucial question. Had Sharifullah's actions directly resulted in loss of life at Abbey Gate? The jurors could not agree. This distinction mattered legally and morally. Had they unanimously answered yes, Sharifullah could have faced a life sentence. Instead, they convicted him of the material support charge alone—a serious crime, but one that did not require proving he knew the specific attack would happen or that he intended those specific deaths.

Sharifullah had requested 17 years. Prosecutors asked for 20. His defense team argued that the government had brought him to trial on a theory it could not prove. They said the only evidence tying him to the Kabul bombing came from his own statements during FBI interrogation, and they suggested he may have told agents what he thought they wanted to hear, possibly out of fear of torture while in Pakistani custody before his transfer to the United States. Prosecutors countered that Sharifullah had pledged allegiance to ISKP as a teenager and that his actions were driven by hatred of Americans. They said he had been involved in dozens of other attacks, including a March 2024 assault on a Moscow concert hall that killed roughly 140 people. They also cited statements in which Sharifullah expressed a desire to "catch and kill the crusaders" from the United States for invading his country after September 11.

Sharifullah did not testify at trial and chose not to address the court before sentencing. Judge Anthony Trenga, who imposed the sentence, called him a "dedicated terrorist" who had shown no remorse for the "unfathomable" grief and suffering he had caused. The courtroom then heard from the families of those who had died. Mark Schmitz of Missouri stood a few feet from where Sharifullah sat and spoke about his 20-year-old son, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz. "They may have taken his life, but they'll never take his legacy," Schmitz said. "A bomb killed my son. It did not kill what he stood for." Paula Knauss-Selph, whose son, Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss, was killed in the Abbey Gate bombing, told the court that her family was "forever changed" by the attack. "No justice will ever be enough to mend my broken heart," she said.

A US Central Command review had identified Abdul Rahman al-Logari as the actual bomber—an IS member who had been released from an Afghan prison by the Taliban. According to an FBI affidavit, Sharifullah recognized al-Logari as an operative he had known while incarcerated. The connection was there, but it was thin. The jury's inability to agree on whether Sharifullah's scouting work directly caused the deaths reflected the difficulty of drawing a straight line from preparation to consequence in a complex attack. What remained certain was that 173 people died at Abbey Gate, and that Sharifullah had aided the organization that claimed responsibility. The sentence reflected that aid, even as the full measure of his culpability remained contested.