New Delhi: Pakistan, acting on a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) input, helped apprehend and capture senior ISIS militant Muhammad Sharifullah, who is believed to have been involved in the 2021 Kabul airport suicide bombing. The revelation was made by US President Donald Trump in his address to Congress Tuesday night.
The 2021 bombing took place at the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport during the US evacuation from Afghanistan that year. As many as 13 US service members and over 170 Afghans trying to flee the country were killed in the attack.
Trump expressed his gratitude towards the Pakistani government for its assistance in apprehending Sharifullah, also known as Jafar. “I want to thank especially the government of Pakistan for helping arrest this monster,” Trump said.
He added that Sharifullah was being transported to the US to face charges.
Reflecting on the Kabul withdrawal, Trump called the event “perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country” that led to the suicide bombing.
He called it a “disastrous and incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan” while also suggesting that chaotic scenes during the withdrawal gave other world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, the impression that the US was vulnerable to threats.
Sharifullah, described as a senior member of ISIS-Khorasan, Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, was arrested in Pakistan near the Afghan border in late February, with assistance from US intelligence agencies.
Following his capture, a team from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) travelled to Pakistan for an interview, where Sharifullah confessed to his involvement in multiple attacks, including the Kabul airport bombing, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
The US government charged Sharifullah, and he was subsequently put on a flight to the US for trial. An indictment is expected to be unsealed soon, outlining his alleged role in planning other attacks, it added.
The ISIS-Khorasan group, led by Sanaullah Ghafari, has carried out several deadly attacks both within and beyond Afghanistan. It claimed responsibility for the deadly gun attack on a Moscow concert hall in March 2024, in which at least 144 people were killed and more than 500 wounded, as well as for a bombing in the Iranian city of Kerman earlier that year in which at least 80 people were killed.
Following the bombing at Kabul’s Abbey Gate, US officials had launched a widespread manhunt for the perpetrators. In the days after the attack, a US drone strike was conducted in an attempt to target ISIS-Khorasan planners, but it ended up killing 10 civilians instead.
Meanwhile, the Taliban, which took control of Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, reportedly killed a senior ISIS militant in April 2023 who was believed to have played a role in the Kabul attack.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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