WASHINGTON: An Islamic State operative who allegedly planned the 2021 suicide bombing outside Kabul airport during the chaotic US military withdrawal has been arrested, President Donald Trump has said.
The bomber detonated a device among packed crowds as they tried to flee Afghanistan, killing 170 Afghans and 13 US troops securing the perimeter, days after the Taliban seized control of the capital.
In his first address to Congress since returning to the White House, Trump announced on Tuesday that Pakistan had assisted in the arrest of “the top terrorist responsible for that atrocity.”
The Justice Department named the man as Mohammad Sharifullah, also known as Jafar, and said he is expected to appear in a Virginia court on Wednesday. Sharifullah, who is a leader of the Islamic State Khorasan branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has been charged with “providing and conspiring to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death.”
The Justice Department said Wednesday the operative admitted to FBI Special Agents “to helping prepare” for the attack, “including scouting a route near the airport for an attacker.”
“This evil ISIS-K terrorist orchestrated the brutal murder of 13 heroic Marines,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Sharifullah also admitted to involvement in several other attacks, the Justice Department said, including the March 2024 Moscow Crocus City Hall attack in which he said “he had shared instructions on how to use AK-style rifles and other weapons to would-be attackers.”
In Tuesday’s speech, Trump took a swipe at his predecessor Joe Biden’s oversight of the “disastrous and incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan” and thanked Pakistan “for helping arrest this monster.”
The United States withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, ending a chaotic evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans who had rushed to Kabul’s airport in the hope of boarding a flight out of the country.
Images of crowds storming the airport, climbing atop aircraft — and some clinging to a departing US military cargo plane as it rolled down the runway — aired on news bulletins around the world.
In April 2023, the White House announced that an Islamic State official involved in plotting the attack at the airport’s Abbey Gate had been killed in an operation by Afghanistan’s new Taliban government.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump for “acknowledging and appreciating Pakistan’s role and support” in counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan.
“We will continue to partner closely with the United States in securing regional peace and stability,” he wrote on social media platform X.
Pakistan’s strategic importance has waned since the US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has seen violence rebound in the border regions.
Tensions between the neighboring countries have soared, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of failing to root out militants sheltering on Afghan soil who launch attacks on Pakistan.
The Taliban government denies the charges and in a statement said the arrest of the ISK operative Sharifullah “is proof” that the group’s hideouts are on Pakistani soil.
ISK, which has claimed several recent attacks in Afghanistan, has staged a growing number of bloody international assaults, including killing more than 90 in an Iranian bombing last year.
Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute director at The Wilson Center, said on X that Pakistan was trying to “leverage US concerns about terror in Afghanistan and pitch a renewed security partnership.” “Pakistan’s help catching the Abbey Gate attack plotter should be seen in this context,” he added.
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