- Sharifullah 'terrorist' appears before the Court in Alexandria.
- Accused of providing material support, terrorist outfit.
- Militant to appear before the Court on Monday again, says Judge.
Alexandria: A Daesh agent who supposedly helped carry out the 2021 suicide bombing outside Kabul during the American military retreat from Afghanistan appeared in a Virginia court on Wednesday.
Mohammad Sharifullah has confessed to explore the route to the airport, where the suicide terrorist later detonated his device among the full crowds that try to flee days after the Afghan Talibanos seized Kabul's control, the Department of Justice said.
The explosion at the door of the Abbey killed at least 170 Afghan, as well as 13 US troops who secured the perimeter of the airport.
Sharifullah appeared in a court in Alexandria, near the US capital. Washington, with a light blue prison attire and a black face mask. He was officially appointed a public defender and an interpreter was provided.
He did not enter a plea. His next appearance will be in the same court on Monday, and will remain in custody until then, said the judge.
Sharifullah, who says that the United States is also called Jafar and is a member of the Daesh-Khorasan branch in Afghanistan, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities and brought to the United States.
President Donald Trump triumphantly announced his arrest on Tuesday in a speech to Congress, qualifying him as “the main terrorist responsible for that atrocity.”
The Daesh-K militants gave Sharifullah a cell phone and a SIM card and told him to check the route to the airport, according to the affidavit of the Justice departments in the case.
When he gave him the whole clean, they told him to leave the area, he said.
“Later that same day, Sharifullah learned about the HKIA attack described above and acknowledged the alleged bomber as a Daesh-K operation he had met while he was imprisoned,” said the affidavit, using an alternative acronym for the group.
Sharifullah is responsible for “providing and conspiring to provide support and material resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization that results in death.”
Moscow attack
Trump thanked Islamabad “for helping to arrest this monster.”
“This evil terrorist from Daesh-K orchestrated the brutal murder of 13 heroic marines,” said US attorney general Pam Bondi in a statement.
Sharifullah also admitted participation in several other attacks, said the Department of Justice, including the attack of the City of Crocus Crocus of March 2024, in which he said “had shared instructions on how to use AK style rifles and other weapons to the possible attackers” by video.
The United States withdrew to its last troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, ending a chaotic evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans who had rushed to Kabul airport with the hope of boarding a flight outside the country.
Images of crowds that broke into the airport, climbed to the planes while they took off, and some clinging to an American military cargo that came out while rolling along the track, was broadcast on newsletters worldwide.
In 2023, the White House announced that a Daesh official involved in the consignment of the airport attack had been killed in an operation by the new Taliban government of Afghanistan.
'Renewed Security Association'
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump for recognizing the role of his country in anti -terrorism efforts in Afghanistan, and promised to “continue associated with the United States” in a position on X.
The strategic importance of Pakistan has decreased from the United States and the retention of the organization of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) of Afghanistan, which has seen a rebound of violence in the border regions.
Tensions between neighboring countries have shot themselves, and Islamabad accused Kabul of not getting militants who take refuge in the Afghan soil that launch attacks against Pakistan.
Daesh-K, who has claimed several recent attacks in Afghanistan, has organized a growing number of bloody international hosts, including the killing of more than 90 people in an Iranian bombardment last year.
Michael Kugelman, director of the Institute in South Asia at the Wilson Center, said in X that Pakistan was trying to “take advantage of concerns about terror in Afghanistan and present a renewed security association.”
