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2026-05-02 Home Front: WoT
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Afghan turban convicted of conspiracy in deadly suicide bombing at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate during US withdrawal
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We missed this a few days ago, in the midst of the Israel/Iran craziness. Usually Khaama Press keeps up with Afghans abroad, but they missed it too, as far as I can tell. [WCPO] Approximately 160 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, attack.
An alleged Islamic State
 ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group bad boy was convicted on Wednesday of a conspiracy charge in a deadly suicide kaboom at a Kabul airport during the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Mohammad Sharifullah
… a.k.a. Mohammad Sharif, alias “Jafar” of ISIS-Khorasan, he was identified by the CIA as the mastermind of the suicide kaboom at Kabul International Airport‘s Abbey Gate during the fatally disorganized Biden pull-out, for which a number of American generals should be thoroughly ashamed. He had previously provided weapons training for two of the four jihadis who committed the March 22, 2024 Crocus City Hall concert massacre that killed 144, maimed 550, and caused $150 million in damage, suggesting he is not at all a nice man. According to the CIA, he headed the ISIS-K group operating in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was captured by Pakistan, based in CIA information, somewhere in the border region... faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years after his one-count conviction in an international terrorism case that President Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and whatever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th and 47th President of the United States...
heralded last year during a speech to a joint session of Congress. Sharifullah didn’t testify at his weeklong trial.
Approximately 160 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, attack at the airport, where U.S. troops were conducting an evacuation operation when a lone jacket wallah detonated an improvised bomb near an entry point known as Abbey Gate.
A federal jury in Virginia convicted Sharifullah of providing material support to an Islamic State regional branch known as ISIS-K. But the jurors deadlocked on whether any deaths at the airport “resulted from” that conspiracy.
Seriously? Virginians are dumb. Sharifullah could have faced a possible life sentence if the jury had unanimously decided that question.
At least some American criminals are just as patriotic as the rest of us. Sometime over the next two decades it is certainly possible to have death at the end of it and discomfort along the way. Sharifullah didn't appear to have any visible reaction to the verdict. U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga didn't immediately set a date for Sharifullah's sentencing.
Defense attorney Lauren Rosen argued that prosecutors failed to present any evidence tying Sharifullah to the bombing besides his own words during hours of FBI questioning. Rosen said Sharifullah told FBI agents what he thought they wanted to hear, possibly because he was afraid of being tortured in Pak custody before he was brought to the U.S.
Concern for Pakistani torture is a legitimate point. “The problem was, he didn’t know much about what actually happened that day,” Rosen told jurors during the trial’s closing arguments.
That seems a hair-splitting argument if he was the group’s Number 1 Big Turban. “The government has told you nothing about how this attack actually happened.”
Justice Department prosecutor Ryan White said Sharifullah played a crucial role in planning the Abbey Gate bombing and was involved in several other attacks by ISIS-K, including its March 2024 attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed roughly 140 people.
“The defendant thought nothing of killing,” White said. “For him, it was just another day at the office.”
A review by U.S. Central Command found that the Abbey Gate bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State group militant who had been released from an Afghan prison by the Taliban. Sharifullah recognized the alleged bomber as an operative he had known while incarcerated, according to an FBI affidavit.
A former Marine testified to Congress that he and others had spotted two possible suspects behaving suspiciously on the morning of the bombing but didn’t get permission to act. However,
denial ain't just a river in Egypt...
the Central Command review concluded that the snipers hadn’t seen the actual bomber and that the attack was not preventable.
By that point, perhaps not, but discussions here and elsewhere strongly suggested that had the generals put any planning into the pull-out, a chaotic situation allowing jihadis to run amok need not have occurred. So in that sense it was very preventable indeed, making the CENTCOM review conclusion seem a tad self-serving. A prosecutor assigned to the Abbey Gate case was fired last year after a right-wing commentator publicly criticized him over his work during President Joe The Big Guy Biden
 ...46th president of the U.S. Old, boring, a plagiarist, fond of hair sniffing and grabbing the protruding parts of women, and not whatcha call brilliant ....
’s Democratic administration. Michael Ben’Ary’s ouster was part of a broader purge of Justice Department veterans deemed to be insufficiently loyal to Trump, a Republican.
Not so much loyal to Trump as accepting the chain of command that ends in his hands, and understandong that the job requires being staunchly neutral on political matters. During his most recent presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly condemned Biden for his role in the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and blamed him for the Abbey Gate attack.
Biden’s White House was following a withdrawal commitment and timeline that the first Trump administration had negotiated with the Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
in 2020. A 2022 review by a government-appointed special investigator concluded decisions made by both Trump and Biden were the key factors leading to the rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military and the Taliban takeover.
White, the prosecutor, said Sharifullah told a journalist that he wanted to "catch and kill the crusaders" from the U.S. for invading his country after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"This case is not complicated," White said. "The defendant told you everything you need to know."
Rosen said U.S. authorities accepted ISIS propaganda at face value when the group took responsibility for the airport bombing. She suggested that militants from a Taliban offshoot were manning Abbey Gate and could have been involved in the attack.
“You can’t base your verdict on mere conjecture and speculation,” Rosen said. “That’s what the prosecution is asking you to do.”
On Aug. 26, 2021, American and other Coalition military forces were conducting an evacuation operation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Abbey Gate was the main entry point for the operation. Thousands of civilians were at Abbey Gate for evacuation.
At approximately 5:36 p.m., ISIS-K member Abdul Rahman al-Logari detonated a body-worn suicide bomb at Abbey Gate, killing 13 U.S. military service members and approximately 160 civilians.
During an interview with FBI Special Agents on March 2, 2025, after waiving his Miranda rights, Sharifullah admitted to helping prepare for the Abbey Gate attack, including scouting a route near the airport for an attacker. Sharifullah specifically checked for law enforcement and American or Taliban checkpoints; he then communicated to other ISIS-K members that he believed the route was clear and that the attacker would not be detected. Sharifullah also admitted to recognizing al-Logari as an ISIS-K operative he had previously known.
During his interview with the FBI, Sharifullah also admitted to supporting and conducting activities on behalf of ISIS-K in multiple other lethal attacks.
On June 20, 2016, a suicide bomber acting for ISIS-K detonated a bomb that killed over ten embassy guards and multiple civilians and wounded other soldiers guarding the Canadian embassy in Kabul. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. As alleged in the complaint, prior to the attack, Sharifullah conducted surveillance to prepare the suicide bomber and later transported the bomber to the attack area.
On March 22, 2024, a group of ISIS-K gunmen attacked Crocus City Hall near Moscow, Russia. The attack killed approximately 130 people and injured numerous others. Russian authorities arrested four gunmen in connection with the attack. During his interview with the FBI, Sharifullah admitted that, on behalf of ISIS-K, he had shared instructions on how to use AK-style rifles and other weapons to would-be attackers. Sharifullah also admitted to recognizing two of the four arrested gunmen as those he had previously instructed.
| Clarion Project has a head shot of the miscreant here. |
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Posted by trailing wife 2026-05-02 00:00||
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