ISIS-K member sentenced to 20 years for role in 2021 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 maximum possible for his conviction. The 28-year-old Afghan man had been found guilty of providing material support to ISIS-K, the Islamic State's affiliate in Afghanistan. What he was not convicted of, despite prosecutors' efforts, was direct involvement in the suicide bombing that killed 13 American service members and roughly 160 Afghans at Kabul airport on August 26, 2021.

The bombing happened during the final, frantic days of the American military withdrawal from Afghanistan. A lone suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device near Abbey Gate, one of the airport's entry points where troops were conducting evacuation operations. According to prosecutors, Sharifullah's role was to scout the route to the airport beforehand, watching for Taliban checkpoints and reporting back to ISIS-K leadership that the path was clear. Hours later, an ISIS-K operative named Abdul Rahman al-Logari carried out the attack. A federal jury in Virginia convicted Sharifullah in April of aiding the terrorist organization, but the jurors could not reach unanimous agreement on whether deaths at the airport "resulted from" that conspiracy. Had they done so, he could have faced a life sentence.

Sharifullah was captured near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan through a joint operation involving Pakistani intelligence and the CIA, then extradited to the United States. He did not testify at trial and declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga imposed the sentence. The judge called him a "dedicated terrorist" who expressed no remorse for the "unfathomable" grief his actions had caused. Prosecutors said that from his teenage years, when he pledged allegiance to ISIS-K, Sharifullah's involvement was driven by hatred of Americans, whom he blamed for invading his country after September 11, 2001. They alleged he had spent nearly a decade at the center of a terror campaign, providing critical support for attacks against civilians worldwide.

Beyond the Kabul bombing, prosecutors said Sharifullah aided in dozens of other ISIS-K operations. His alleged roles included providing surveillance, transporting suicide bombers or weapons, and communicating with attackers. One attack he was linked to was the March 2024 assault on a Moscow concert hall that killed roughly 140 people. Another was a 2016 suicide bombing targeting security guards at the Canadian embassy in Kabul. In one statement to a journalist, prosecutors said, Sharifullah expressed his desire to "catch and kill the crusaders" from the United States.

Sharifullah's defense team argued a different picture. They said prosecutors had failed to present any evidence tying him to the Kabul bombing except his own words during hours of FBI questioning. His lawyers contended that Sharifullah told agents what he thought they wanted to hear, possibly out of fear of torture while in Pakistani custody before his extradition. They characterized him not as a leader but as a low-level "conduit for messages passed between different actors in the organization." In their sentencing memo, they emphasized that no trial evidence linked him to the Abbey Gate attack beyond his own statements, made while his family was detained by Pakistani authorities known to torture detainees. Sharifullah had requested a 17-year sentence; prosecutors sought the maximum of 20 years.

Parents of the American service members killed at Abbey Gate delivered victim impact statements from a podium just feet from where Sharifullah sat. Mark Schmitz of Missouri spoke about his 20-year-old son, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, and asked Sharifullah to look at him as he spoke. "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 bombing, said the family was "forever changed" by the attack. "No justice will ever be enough to mend my broken heart," she said.

The case has drawn attention at the highest levels. President Trump highlighted it during a speech to a joint session of Congress last year. The Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General for National Security, John Eisenberg, said in a statement that Sharifullah "contributed to the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and dozens of others at Abbey Gate." Yet the jury's inability to unanimously agree on his direct responsibility for those deaths underscores a persistent tension in the case: the conviction rests on his support for the organization, not on proof that his specific actions caused the bombing. That gap between what prosecutors alleged and what a jury could prove remains the case's unresolved question.