Alexandria, Virginia– US authorities ‘got the wrong man’ when they charged an alleged Islamic State fighter in a deadly crime Suicide bombing at Kabul airport During the US Army The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan In 2021, the defense attorney said Monday at the start of the man’s trial in Virginia.
Muhammad Sharifullah is accused of scouting the bomber’s route to the airport before the attack that killed nearly 200 people, including 13 American soldiers, at the end of America’s longest war. FBI agents interviewed him for hours over several days after his arrest.
But one of Sharifullah’s lawyers said he had no role in the bomb plot and suggested that the Afghan national had made a false confession.
“The American government got the wrong man,” defense attorney Jeremy Cummins said during the trial’s opening arguments. “That is why we are proud to represent Muhammad Sharifullah in this trial.”
Justice Department Prosecutor John Gibbs said Sharifullah, also known as Jaafar, spoke to a journalist about killing American “crusaders” who invaded his homeland after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
“The feeling was to capture the Crusaders and kill them,” Sharif Allah told the journalist, according to Gibbs.
Sharifullah told FBI agents that he joined the regional branch of the Islamic State known as ISIS Khorasan around 2016. Although he denied having a planning role in the Kabul airport bombing, he told agents he did “a lot of other things” on behalf of ISIS-K, Gibbs said.
President Donald Trump announced Sharifullah’s arrest during his State of the Union address in March 2025. Sharifullah arrived in the United States the next day to face trial and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
Twelve jurors and three alternates were selected Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, for Sharif Allah’s federal trial on charges of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death. The trial is expected to last about a week.
US forces were conducting an evacuation operation at Kabul airport on August 26, 2021, when a lone suicide bomber detonated an explosive device near an entry point known as Abby Gate. About 160 Afghans were killed in the attack along with 13 American soldiers.
A Review by US Central Command It found that the Abbey Gate bomber was Abdul Rahman Al-Lughari, an ISIS fighter who was released by the Taliban from an Afghan prison. Sharifullah identified the alleged bomber as an agent he knew while in prison, according to the British Daily Mail. FBI affidavit.
Former marine to attest He told Congress that he and others had observed two potential suspects acting suspiciously on the morning of the bombing but had not obtained authorization to act. However, the Central Command review concluded that the snipers did not see the actual bomber and that the attack could not have been prevented.
However, the massacre has led to sharp criticism of how Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration has handled the US withdrawal from Afghanistan after a war that has spanned two decades. In the election trial, before winning a second term in the White House, Trump repeatedly condemned Biden’s role in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and blamed him for the Abbeygate attack.
One of the prosecutors assigned to the Abbeygate case was Hu Launched by the Ministry of Justice last year after a right-wing commentator publicly criticized him for his work during the Biden administration. The ouster of Michael Ben Ari was part of a broader purge of Justice Department veterans deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump, a Republican.
Sharifullah is accused of participating in other attacks linked to ISIS-K. The FBI said it provided instructions on the proper use of firearms before other ISIS-K members carried out an attack March 2024 attack on the Moscow Concert Hall Which killed nearly 140 people.
Cummins noted that Sharifullah made a false confession under duress while in detention in Pakistan. The defense attorney told jurors that the airport bombing was likely an “inside job” aided by Taliban-sympathetic extremists who were in power and helping with airport security that day.
“The Pakistanis wanted him to confess, and their intelligence service tortured people,” Cummins said.