ISIS-K Member Gets 20 Years in US Prison Over Kabul Airport Attack Case

A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced Mohammad Sharifullah to 20 years in prison on Wednesday for providing material support to the Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-K, the group that claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at Kabul's airport in 2021.

The attack at Abbey Gate, an entry point to Hamid Karzai International Airport, killed 13 U.S. service members and about 160 Afghans as American troops carried out an evacuation during the military's withdrawal from Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2021.

A jury convicted Sharifullah in April on a single count of providing material support to ISIS-K, but could not reach agreement on whether he bore any responsibility for the airport bombing. Prosecutors had alleged that his role was to scout a route to the airport. Because the jury deadlocked on whether deaths at the airport resulted from the conspiracy, he avoided a possible life sentence and instead received the maximum term for the count on which he was convicted.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga described Sharifullah as a dedicated terrorist who showed no remorse for what the judge called unfathomable grief and suffering. Sharifullah did not testify at trial and declined to address the court before sentencing.

Several parents of U.S. service members delivered victim impact statements from a podium a few feet from the defendant. Mark Schmitz of Missouri, whose 20-year-old son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, was killed, asked Sharifullah to look at him as he spoke. He said a bomb killed his son but did not kill what his son stood for.

Defense lawyers had sought a 17-year sentence, arguing that Sharifullah was never an ISIS-K leader and had not been convicted of any conduct tied to the airport bombing. They said he was brought to the United States because the government believed he took part in the Abbey Gate attack, a theory they said prosecutors could not prove at trial. The defense also contended that the government presented no evidence linking him to the bombing beyond his own statements during hours of FBI questioning, and that he told agents what he thought they wanted to hear, possibly out of fear of torture in Pakistani custody before his transfer to the U.S.

Prosecutors, who sought the 20-year term, said in a sentencing memo that Sharifullah had pledged allegiance to ISIS-K as a teenager and that his violence was driven by hate toward Americans. They said he told a journalist he wanted to catch and kill U.S. crusaders for invading his country after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and they linked him to dozens of other attacks, including a March 2024 assault on a Moscow concert hall that killed roughly 140 people.

A U.S. Central Command review identified the Abbey Gate bomber as Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State member released from an Afghan prison by the Taliban. An FBI affidavit said Sharifullah recognized the alleged bomber as an operative he had known while incarcerated.

President Donald Trump had highlighted the case last year during a speech to a joint session of Congress.