US President Donald Trump has thanked Pakistan for its role in the capture of ISIS terrorist Mohammad Sharifullah, who was responsible for the killing of 13 American soldiers in a bombing at Kabul airport during the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
According to a report by US broadcaster CNN, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, US President Donald Trump referred to the bombing at the Abbey Gate of Kabul airport in 2021 and said, “Tonight I am pleased to announce that we have captured the top terrorist responsible for this atrocity and he is coming here to face the sharp sword of American justice.”
US President Donald Trump thanked Islamabad for its role in the arrest, saying, “I want to especially thank the government of Pakistan for helping to capture this beast.”
According to US media reports, the arrest is the result of close cooperation between the CIA and Pakistan’s intelligence services, particularly the ISI. Mohammad Sharifullah, also known as ‘Jafar’, was arrested near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border after the CIA pinpointed his whereabouts.
Sharifullah, a senior commander of ISIS-K, is accused of planning and overseeing the bombing of the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate, which made him a long-time target for US counterterrorism agencies.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe raised the issue in a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart, Lieutenant General Asim Malik, just days after his deployment.
The issue was raised again during a meeting at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, where the two officials stressed the importance of cooperation.
The CIA had been tracking Sharifullah for some time, and when new intelligence pointed to his whereabouts, the agency shared it with Pakistan’s intelligence service, which then deployed an elite unit.
10 days after Sharifullah’s capture, Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel spoke by phone with Lt. Gen. Malik from CIA headquarters in Langley to discuss the next steps in his extradition.
A coordinated effort by the CIA, the Justice Department and the FBI, with all parties actively participating in the process, could mark the beginning of a significant shift in cooperation between Washington and Islamabad.
A White House official has confirmed that Mohammad Sharifullah is being extradited to the United States. He was allegedly involved in planning a deadly bombing at the Abbey Gate of Kabul airport during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Moments after Trump’s speech, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in an ex-post that “As President Trump has just announced, I can report that one of the terrorists responsible for the killing of 13 American soldiers at Abbeygate during the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal has been turned over to the FBI, DOJ and CIA tonight.”
Sharifullah was charged in an indictment filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of Virginia with providing material support and conspiring to a designated foreign terrorist organization that resulted in deaths.
He was interviewed by FBI agents on Sunday, where he told them he had joined ISIS-K, an offshoot of ISIS, in 2016. In the interview, Sharifullah admitted to facilitating multiple deadly attacks on behalf of ISIS-K, according to the indictment.
