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Afghan national Mohammad Sharifullah was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Wednesday, September 16, for a conspiracy to support the Islamic State's Khorasan Province that ran for close to a decade. The Justice Department said his work included the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul, which killed 13 US service members and about 160 civilians.
Court records lay out his role on August 26, 2021. ISIS-K leadership tasked Sharifullah with checking a road to Hamid Karzai International Airport for Taliban checkpoints. He drove the route at about 2pm and reported it clear. At roughly 5:36pm, Abdul Rahman al-Logari detonated a body-worn device at Abbey Gate, where thousands of civilians had gathered for evacuation. The two men had known each other from a spell in an Afghan prison.
The pattern repeated across other attacks. On June 20, 2016, a suicide bomber targeted Nepali security guards protecting the Canadian embassy in Kabul. Sharifullah carried out the surveillance that prepared the bomber, then drove him to the site. In March 2024 he passed instructions on AK-style rifles to the gunmen who attacked Crocus City Hall near Moscow, and stayed in contact with them during the assault. More than 100 civilians were killed there.
In all, prosecutors linked him to over a dozen ISIS-K attacks between 2016 and his capture in 2025. His jobs were the unglamorous ones that make an attack work: reconnaissance of routes and targets, moving bombers into position, carrying and cleaning weapons, relaying messages between cells, and filming explosions for propaganda.
Darren Cox, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, said Sharifullah had been "a critical link in ISIS-K operations." The case was investigated by that office and prosecuted in the Eastern District of Virginia, where it is docketed as 1:25-cr-143. The sentencing comes a day after federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania charged a 21-year-old with acquiring a firearm and ammunition intended for an attack on behalf of ISIS.
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