Trial for alleged Abbey Gate bombing co-conspirator delayed until 2026 after lead prosecutor fired

The start date for the highly-anticipated trial for the alleged ISIS-K terrorist charged as a co-conspirator in the deadly Abbey Gate bombing of August 2021 has been pushed back from early December into the new year  – following last month’s firing of the top prosecutor on the case.

Mohammed Sharifullah, the alleged ISIS-K member charged with providing reconnaissance in the lead up to the Abbey Gate attack, which killed 13 U.S. service members, was extradited to the U.S. from Pakistan in March and was slated to go on trial in northern Virginia on December 8. But the Justice Department requested this month to push back the trial date, and the new start date is now Feb. 9, 2026.

The two-month delay comes amidst a bit of upheaval in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which is handling the case, including the resignation of U.S. Attorney Erik S. Siebert, the ascension of interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, the prosecution of fired FBI Director James Comey, and the removal of a number of prosecutors including Michael Ben’Ary, who had been the lead prosecutor on the case against Sharifullah. 

In addition, Comey’s son-in-law, Troy Edwards, who was also a prosecutor on the Sharifullah case, resigned in late September after his father-in-law was indicted.

The Abbey Gate case involves classified information — often a complicating factor in keeping a court schedule on track — and the pre-trial schedule had already also been delayed somewhat in September and October.

It has not been made known whether the firing of Ben’Ary or the resignation of Edwards played a role in the delay of the trial, and the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News about why Ben’Ary was terminated and whether his removal was a factor in the DOJ agreeing with the defense to push the trial into February.

“Monster” extradited from Pakistan to the United States

Sharifullah's capture – in a joint effort between Pakistani intelligence and the U.S. spy agencies – was announced by President Donald Trump at a joint session of Congress in March. Trump has thanked Pakistan for “helping arrest this monster.” 

FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted shortly after Trump's announcement that "tonight the FBI, DOJ, and CIA have extradited one of the terrorists responsible for the murder of the 13 American soldiers at Abbey Gate during the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. One step closer to justice for these American heroes and their families."

It has been revealed that Sharifullah confessed to the FBI that he played a key reconnaissance role in the bombing at the gate of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, during U.S. troops' final evacuation from the country. 

Sharifullah also claims to have trained ISIS-K gunmen for a deadly attack on a concert hall in Moscow in 2024 and to have facilitated a bombing targeting Canadian embassy security guards in Kabul in 2016.

The Aug, 26, 2021, Abbey Gate attack, in which a suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt, killed 11 Marines, one Army soldier, one Navy corpsman and an estimated 170 Afghan civilians, while wounding dozens of other U.S. troops and scores of Afghans in the crowd, on 

Comey drama intersects with Abbey Gate case

Judge Anthony Trenga in July had initially set the trial date for December 8.

The indictment against Comey was brought in September by Halligan. The former Trump personal lawyer and Trump White House aide replaced Siebert, who had resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office days before the indictments were announced, allegedly following pressure from the Trump administration to bring charges against Comey.

Comey was charged in September with a false statements count for allegedly lying to the Senate when he denied ever authorizing FBI officials to leak to the media about the bureau’s Hillary Clinton investigation, and he has also been charged with allegedly obstructing a congressional investigation.

“Yet another top aide for Lisa Monaco now works at EDVA. Michael BenAry was Monaco’s senior counsel then promoted to assistant deputy attorney general under Biden regime,” conservative reporter Julie Kelly tweeted in early October. “He was moved back to EDVA –he had worked there before –right before Inauguration Day. He’s now chief of national security unit at EDVA. One can only assume he was a big part of the internal resistance to the Comey indictment.”

Multiple outlets reported that Ben’Ary was not part of the Comey case, although the DOJ has not made a statement on this.

Ben'Ary soon shared an early October letter he had penned decrying the fact that he had been fired.

“I received a letter stating that I had been terminated immediately, without cause. It appears that my termination was based on little more than a single social media post containing false information,” he said.

Ben’Ary also highlighted his role in the Abbey Gate case.

“I am troubled that I was removed so abruptly in the middle of important work, including the prosecution of Mohammed Sharifullah, the only person to face justice in the United States for the bombing ... . This prosecution was meant to bring justice to the 13 United States service members and scores of civilians killed and injured,” Ben’Ary said. “While I have the utmost confidence in my co-counsel, my abrupt, apparently thoughtless removal with no transition will hurt this case.”

Ben’Ary argued that “justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”

Human Events has reported that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche “personally rejected a sweetheart plea deal” from Ben’Ary for Sharifullah “which would’ve given the bomber a light sentence after he killed service members.”

Kelly argued that the letter from Ben’Ary “simply reaffirms that new US Atty for EDVA Lindsey Halligan made the right move in firing him” and asked, “Are we supposed to believe now, after reading the same worn partisan attack on the Trump DOJ, that he was neutral in the Comey indictment controversy at the office?”

She reportedly said her post contributed to Ben’Ary being removed.

Trump had said on Truth Social in September that it was his opinion that Monaco should be fired from her post as president of global affairs for Microsoft, contending that she had been the “Lawfare and Weaponization obsessed Deputy Attorney General under Crooked Joe Biden and Lisa’s Puppet ‘Boss’ Attorney General Merrick Garland.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, released a document in October showing that Monaco, former Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray all approved opening the anti-Trump Arctic Frost investigation.

Russiagate-related subpoenas are also being sent out as new revelations indicate that Comey expected Clinton to emerge victorious in 2016, that key information on Crossfire Hurricane and other FBI investigations was hidden in burn bags at FBI headquarters, and that Comey friend and confidante Daniel Richman allegedly leaked to the media despite FBI guidelines warning him not to.

The DOJ, with the agreement of Sharifullah’s lawyers, in early November filed a sealed motion to continue the trial date for the Abbey Gate case. The next day, Trenga ordered that “the trial date in this case is continued” until February of next year.

Abbey Gate bombing accomplice

Abdul Rahman al-Logari – who had been freed by the Taliban from a prison at Bagram Air Base in mid-August 2021, mere weeks after the U.S. military abandoned the base in July 2021 – has been identified as having carried out the attack. The FBI said Sharifullah recognized Logari as an ISIS-K operative he had known while in prison.

The Pentagon under Democrat President Joe Biden had argued that the Abbey Gate attack was not preventable – going so far as to say it still would have occurred even if the bomber had remained behind bars rather than being freed by the Taliban — despite a host of evidence indicating that the attack did not have to happen the way it did.

Patel has repeatedly described Sharifullah as the “Abbey Gate bomber.” 

Patel tweeted in October that “our FBI is delivering results” and he included the capture of the Abbey Gate bomber.

“In just 7 months, 4 of the Top 10 Most Wanted fugitives have been captured – the same number the last administration got in 4 years. … Abbey Gate bomber [found] in 2 weeks,” Patel said. “We cut the red tape and get it done.”

Patel also said in the Oval Office last month with Trump that “it took you, sir, two weeks to get the Abbey Gate bomber. Joe Biden had four years to look for him, and you got him in two weeks ... and now thirteen brave warriors who were senselessly murdered because of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal — they have justice, their families have a piece of mind, and we’re going to continue to find the others.”

The FBI has said Sharifullah was read his "Miranda rights" by the FBI in March and that the alleged terrorist proceeded to tell them he was recruited into ISIS-K around 2016. The FBI said the terrorist was imprisoned in Afghanistan from approximately 2019 until two weeks before the Kabul airport attack.

Sharifullah has been charged with providing material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, and he faces a potential life sentence.

The FBI has said Sharifullah was contacted by another ISIS-K member upon being freed from prison in mid-August 2021 who connected Sharifullah with the plot to attack U.S. forces at the airport. The bureau said ISIS-K members provided Sharifullah with a motorcycle, funds for a cell phone and instructions on using social media to communicate with them in the lead-up to the attack.

Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick, who handled the early court proceedings against Sharifullah, ruled in March that "I do find probable cause" to continue to hold him for his alleged role.

The hearing included testimony from an FBI agent on the witness stand and details about the role played by Pakistan in capturing and interrogating Sharifullah.

FBI special agent Seth Parker, who authored the affidavit underpinning the criminal charges against Sharifullah, took the witness stand and said the FBI had conducted five interviews of Sharifullah – two in Pakistan, two on the aircraft when Sharifullah was transported to the U.S., and one in Virginia.

Parker said Sharifullah had been “in the custody of Pakistani services” at a Pakistani airbase near Quetta, the capital city of the Pakistani province of Balochistan, but also said, “I cannot attest to anything that happened prior to him being interviewed by the FBI.”

The FBI agent also said Sharifullah had told investigators that he had been living for several years with his wife and children in Quetta, where he had been selling livestock. The agent also told the federal prosecutors that Sharifullah said he was doing work on behalf of ISIS-K while in Quetta.

Parker said that Sharifullah was – as the terrorist himself confessed – involved in “route reconnaissance” in the lead-up to the attack and said that “according to him [Sharifullah], no” the ISIS-K member was not involved in actually planning the attack. Parker said that “according to him [Sharifullah], he didn’t know the specificity of the target.”

The agent said his FBI colleagues had Sharifullah draw a map of the reconnaissance mission he claimed to have carried out, and said the mission that Sharifullah spoke of was near the airport but only up to a traffic circle near Abbey Gate.

Sharifullah jailed — but Taliban back in charge

Biden announced the unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in an April 2021 speech, setting the withdrawal deadline for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. 

The Taliban were sparked into rapid military operations, conducted a rapid takeover of the countryside in the ensuing months and swept into the Afghan capital of Kabul on August 15, 2021. 

The chaotic and deadly non-combatant evacuation operation by the U.S. was conducted while the U.S. military relied upon a hostile Taliban to provide security outside the airport. 

Gold Star family members of the fallen U.S. soldiers pleaded with the Biden administration for more answers about the attack, including during a roundtable before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2023, and the Biden White House sought to place the blame for the debacle on the first Trump Administration.

The Taliban has re-instituted its brutal rule of Afghanistan, and is shielding al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the country. The regional and transnational threat posed by ISIS-K has grown since the Taliban takeover.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, the deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, told Just the News in October that at least 370 suspected jihadists had been killed in the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Gorka also said he joined other top administration officials in March when Sharifullah was extradited to U.S. soil.

“It was the night of the president's address to Congress. At 3 a.m. I was on the tarmac with Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, John Ratcliffe, as we waited for the DOJ jet to land with Sharifullah, the Abbey Gate bomb suspect, on board — a priority I'd made for myself," Gorka recalled.