An alleged Islamic State militant was convicted on Wednesday of a conspiracy cost in a deadly suicide bombing at a Kabul airport during the US army’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Mohammad Sharifullah faces a most jail sentence of 20 years after his one-count conviction in a global terrorism case that President Donald Trump heralded final 12 months during a speech to a joint session of Congress. Sharifullah didn’t testify at his weeklong trial.
Approximately 160 Afghans and 13 US service members have been killed in the August 26, 2021, assault at the airport, the place US troops have been conducting an evacuation operation when a lone suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive gadget close to an entry level generally known as Abbey Gate.
A federal jury in Virginia convicted Sharifullah of offering materials help to an Islamic State regional department generally known as ISIS-Okay. But the jurors deadlocked on whether or not any deaths at the airport “resulted from” that conspiracy.
Sharifullah may have confronted a potential life sentence if the jury had unanimously determined that query.
Sharifullah didn’t seem to have any seen response to the decision. US District Judge Anthony Trenga didn’t instantly set a date for Sharifullah’s sentencing.
Defense lawyer Lauren Rosen argued that prosecutors didn’t current any proof tying Sharifullah to the bombing apart from his personal phrases during hours of FBI questioning. Rosen stated Sharifullah informed FBI brokers what he thought they wished to listen to, probably as a result of he was afraid of being tortured in Pakistani custody earlier than he was dropped at the US.
“The problem was, he didn’t know much about what actually happened that day,” Rosen informed jurors during the trial’s closing arguments. “The government has told you nothing about how this attack actually happened.”
Justice Department prosecutor Ryan White stated Sharifullah performed a vital function in planning the Abbey Gate bombing and was concerned in a number of different assaults by ISIS-Okay, together with its March 2024 assault at a Moscow live performance corridor that killed roughly 140 individuals.
“The defendant thought nothing of killing,” White stated. “For him, it was just another day at the office.”
A overview by US Central Command discovered that the Abbey Gate bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State group militant who had been launched from an Afghan jail by the Taliban. Sharifullah acknowledged the alleged bomber as an operative he had identified whereas incarcerated, in response to an FBI affidavit.
A former Marine testified to Congress that he and others had noticed two potential suspects behaving suspiciously on the morning of the bombing however didn’t get permission to behave. However, the Central Command overview concluded that the snipers hadn’t seen the precise bomber and that the assault was not preventable.
A prosecutor assigned to the Abbey Gate case was fired final 12 months after a right-wing commentator publicly criticized him over his work during President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration. Michael Ben’Ary’s ouster was half of a broader purge of Justice Department veterans deemed to be insufficiently loyal to Trump, a Republican.