White House still says ISIS-K terrorist was ‘mastermind’ of Abbey Gate attack after jury deadlocked

The Trump White House’s new national counterterrorism strategy refers to Mohammad Sharifullah as the “mastermind” of the Abbey Gate attack even after a federal jury deadlocked last month on whether the convicted ISIS-K terrorist was responsible for any of the deaths in the 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul International Airport in August 2021.

The strategy was published by the White House earlier in May and repeatedly referred to Sharifullah as the “mastermind” of the bombing, known as the "Abbey Gate" attack because it occurred at that gate at the Afghanistan airport.

The jury found Sharifullah, an Afghan national, guilty of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist group in connection with the bombing but deadlocked on whether such help directly resulted in any of the deaths of 13 U.S. service members during the the final U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. He now faces 20 years in prison. 

The Justice Department charged Sharifullah with a single count of conspiring with others to provide the material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization – ISIS-K – resulting in death.

Eleven Marines, one Navy corpsman, one Army soldier, and roughly 170 Afghans were killed in the August 26, 2021, attack, when a suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device as U.S. troops were conducting the final evacuation operation.

“When I returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, four years of weakness, failure, surrender, and humiliation under the last administration came to an end," President Donald Trump wrote in the counterterrorism strategy’s presidential foreword this month. 

"As part of my commitment to defending America from all enemies, foreign and domestic, we are once again working to crush the threat of terrorism. Within 43 days, we apprehended the terrorist mastermind of the attack on Abbey Gate in Afghanistan that left 13 American service members dead.”

The counterterrorism strategy’s subsection on “Asia” also labeled Sharifullah as the mastermind.

“President Trump keeps his promises to the American people, especially to the families who lost loved ones to terror attacks under prior administrations," the strategy reads. “Just 43 days into his new term, as he was addressing a Joint Session of Congress, the President announced that the mastermind of the Abbey Gate massacre that killed 13 service members in Afghanistan was arriving on U.S. soil that night to face justice,” Whether the threat emanates from Central Asia or closer to home, it will continue to be dealt with under this Administration.”

The strategy also included a March 2025 photo of a captured and shackled Sharifullah flanked by two FBI agents with the caption reading: “Mohammad Sharifullah, AKA Jafar, is apprehended and extradited for the murder of American warfighters at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan in August 2021.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, including about any intelligence the Trump administration might be in possession of which points to Sharifullah as the mastermind of the attack but which was not presented at trial.

Administration hints at intel revealing Abbey Gate role

Sharifullah's capture by Pakistani intelligence, with alleged help from U.S. spy agencies, was announced by Trump at a joint session of Congress in March of last year. Trump thanked Pakistan for “helping arrest this monster.” He also called Sharifullah “the top terrorist responsible for that atrocity” at Abbey Gate.

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."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tweeted that “President Trump just announced the terrorist mastermind behind the Abbey Gate Bombing, which killed 13 US Service Members, has been apprehended and will soon come to America to face justice.”

“After nearly four years, President Trump delivered justice for the families of the 13 American heroes who were killed at Abbey Gate in the Biden botched Afghanistan withdrawal, which was one of the worst humiliations in the history of our country,” Leavitt said at a press briefing. “President Trump announced that we have detained Mohammed Sharifullah, the monster, who was responsible for that horrific attack, and he was delivered to Dulles Airfield earlier this morning.”

Then-State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters that “the president announced the arrest of an ISIS-K operative and planner responsible for the deaths, as I mentioned earlier today, of the 13 brave American service members and over 160 Afghans at Abbey Gate.”

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement at the time that “this evil ISIS-K terrorist orchestrated the brutal murder of 13 heroic service members.”

Then-CENTCOM Commander Michael “Erik” Kurilla told the House Armed Services Committee in his opening statement that “the actions of our Pakistani partners that led to the arrest and extradition of Mohammad Sharifullah, the ISIS-K planner behind the 26 August 2021 suicide attack at Abbey Gate that killed 13 U.S. service members and approximately 160 civilians, highlights Pakistan’s value as a partner.”

Kurilla also told the House of the Pakistanis that “they have extradited back Jafar, who was one of the key individuals behind the Abbey Gate bombing.”

Administration officials also pointed to intelligence that had led them to go after Sharifullah.

One U.S. official reportedly told Axios that Sharifullah was "the mastermind" of the Abbey Gate attack, and also said that “because of his role, he has been a high value target of the U.S. intelligence community for several years.”

Mike Waltz – then the Trump national security advisor – told Fox News, “We shared this intelligence with Pakistan, and he’s rolled up – and he will be tried in a U.S. court.”

“We shared the intelligence and they moved on that intelligence, and they’ve now extradited him in a very short order,” Waltz said of Sharifullah, adding, “He confessed. This was the planner of that bombing that killed our thirteen.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe also indicated the U.S. had intelligence pointing to Sharifullah.

“My second day on the job … I spoke with the head of Pakistani intelligence. I shared with him intelligence that we had indicating that Jafar was located in the Afghan-Pakistan border region,” Ratcliffe said on Fox Business. “I told him if he wanted to work with President Trump and have good relations with our country, then they would make this a high priority.”

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, the senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, repeatedly pointed to Sharifullah as the mastermind and referenced intelligence which had made the ISIS-K terrorist a U.S. target.

Gorka told NewsNation that “this is the real mastermind, this is the monster behind the Abbey Gate massacre of three and a half years ago that took the lives of thirteen of our brave warfighters” and that “he confessed to Abbey Gate.”

He also told Fox News about how he made catching Sharifullah a top priority on the first day of the second Trump Administration, talking about writing “J” for “Jafar” on the whiteboard of his Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.

“The NSA especially, we salute – you know who you are, we’re not going to give the names away – the NSA team that found a certain piece of intelligence,” Gorka said. “We provided it to the government of Pakistan.”

“Why did I have ‘J’? Because Jafar was the real guy behind Abbey Gate,” Gorka told Breitbart. “I wanted to move heaven and earth, I wanted to move the whole Intelligence Community, the whole counterterrorism enterprise, to find this guy to kill him or bring him to justice.”

“I’ve got to give a huge shout-out to our Intelligence Community, especially the National Security Agency,” Gorka continued. “Because of the NSA, we were able to provide a certain piece of intelligence to the Pakistani government and with that piece of intelligence the Pakistani government found this evil piece of human filth in the Afghan-Pakistan border area.”

Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary also tweeted in March 2025 that “Sharifullah was a key figure behind the Abbey Gate attack at Kabul airport” and that “he also played a central role in at least 29 suicide bombings and terrorist attacks in Kabul.”

Sarwary reported that “a former National Directorate of Security official revealed that Sharifullah was part of ISIS-K’s Kabul Katiba unit and is one of the closest figures to ISIS-K leader Shahab al-Muhajir” and said that “his capture is expected to provide critical intelligence on ISIS-K’s operational structure, funding networks, and historical ties with the Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda.”

Jury said Sharifullah was an ISIS-K terrorist but deadlocked on Abbey Gate role

The Justice Department put out a press release in late April touting that “a federal jury today convicted Afghan national Mohammad Sharifullah, a member of the terrorist organization the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham-Khorasan Province, of participating in a nine-year conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

However, made no mention of the jury deadlocking over the element of the charge that alleged Sharifullah’s actions were responsible for deaths at Abbey Gate.

“On Aug. 26, 2021, ISIS-K leadership tasked Sharifullah with surveilling a road to the Hamid Karzai International Airport to ensure it was clear of Taliban checkpoints. At about 2:00 pm, Sharifullah travelled his assigned route and communicated to ISIS-K leadership that the route was clear,” the DOJ said last month. “At approximately 5:36 p.m., ISIS-K operative Abdul Rahman al-Logari, whom Sharifullah knew previously from their time together in an Afghan prison, detonated a body-worn suicide bomb at Abbey Gate, killing 13 U.S. military service members and approximately 160 civilians.”

The FBI had said that Sharifullah confessed to being involved in “route reconnaissance” in the lead-up to the attack.

The recorded words of Sharifullah were played for hours during his eight-day trial, with the jury hearing him admit to involvement in a host of ISIS-K terrorist attacks and confessing to conducting reconnaissance ahead of the airport attack, while denying foreknowledge of it occurring and raising concerns about his and his family’s detention by the Pakistanis.

The DOJ also provided evidence in court that Sharifullah further confessed to a role in facilitating a June 2016 suicide bombing attack that killed more than 10 guards tasked with protecting the Canadian embassy. The FBI has said Sharifullah also claimed to have trained ISIS-K gunmen for a deadly attack on a concert hall in Moscow in 2024.

However, Sharifullah's defense team argued that prosecutors failed to present any evidence beyond its client's own words during hours of FBI questioning tying him to the bombing.

DOJ prosecutor Ryan White delivered the closing argument for the agency, saying that Sharifullah was a “long-standing, proud member of ISIS-K. ... How do you know that? He told you.”

White repeatedly referenced Sharifullah’s 2020 prison interview he gave to Al Jazeera about his role in ISIS-K and his 2025 interviews with the FBI in which he confessed to a number of ISIS-K attacks.

“Catch and kill the Crusaders, that is all,” was a prison interview quote from Sharifullah to which White repeatedly returned.

Sharifullah told the FBI last year that the “emirs in Kabul” – the ISIS-K leaders in the Afghan capital – make decisions about what to strike, though he claimed he didn’t know who carried out the Abbey Gate attack.

He pointed to “Engineer Shahab” and “Nawab” – ISIS-K top leader Sanaullah Ghafari and Kabul area ISIS-K commander Qari Nawab — as the men who likely made the Abbey Gate decision, saying those two “must have been aware.”

Sharifullah said in the recordings that he had met with Ghafari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajir, in the lead up to a terrorist attack back in 2016.

“The United States is committed to using its full set of counterterrorism tools to counter the threat posed by the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province, commonly referred to as ISIS-K, as part of our relentless efforts to ensure Afghanistan cannot again become a platform for international terrorism,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a November 2021 announcement naming multiple ISIS-K officials as Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

“Sanaullah Ghafari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajir, is ISIS-K’s current overall emir. He was appointed by the ISIS core to lead ISIS-K in June 2020,” Blinken said. “Ghafari is responsible for approving all ISIS-K operations throughout Afghanistan and arranging funding to conduct operations.”

The UN Security Council announced in December 2021 that Ghafari had been added to the ISIS-K sanctions list.

The State Department’s Rewards for Justice page is offering an award of up to $10 million for “information” on “ISIS-K leader Shahab al-Muhajir.” The State Department page says that Ghafari “is responsible for approving all ISIS-K operations throughout Afghanistan and arranging funding to conduct operations.”

The defense team in the April trial sought to deny their client’s involvement in the Abbey Gate attack, suggested that his confessions were coerced thanks to the Pakistanis, and shifted blame for the attack to the Taliban.

FBI special agent Seth Parker, who authored the affidavit underpinning the criminal charges against Sharifullah, answered “yes” during a pretrial hearing in March 2025 when asked by the defense if the only evidence in the criminal affidavit linking Sharifullah to the Abbey Gate attack were admissions that the terrorist made during the FBI's interrogations.

The FBI agent confirmed at that hearing that Sharifullah was involved in “route reconnaissance” in the lead-up to the attack and said that “according to him, no,” Sharifullah was not involved in actually planning the attack.

The jury deliberated for about eight hours over two days last month, with some jurors seeming to disagree about the role Sharifullah played in the attack, ultimately deadlocking.

Biden Admin announced Taliban killed “mastermind” but didn't  name him

The Biden Administration announced in 2023 that the Taliban had killed the “mastermind” of the Abbey Gate attack but did not give a name.

It was reported by the Washington Examiner in late April 2023 that a U.S. Defense official said that the Taliban had killed an ISIS-K member in the days prior and that “this was the individual we assess was most responsible for the August 26 bombing at Abbey Gate.” The official described the terrorist as a “planner” but declined to provide the specific identity of the ISIS-K member, saying, “I would not expect a name to be released.”

The official also said the U.S. “did not provide any assistance to the Taliban” and called it “purely a Taliban operation.” The official added that “we don’t make it a practice to announce or speak to Taliban operations,” but “we wanted the American people to know” about the news and wanted the families of the 13 U.S. service members to “know first.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters the next day that the administration was declining to share the alleged mastermind’s name, saying that he was “not at liberty to reveal that. I do understand the question. I do understand the interest. I’m not at liberty to reveal that. But we are confident that this particular individual was, in fact, the mastermind of the Abbey Gate attack.”

“The ISIS-K terrorist who was the mastermind of the horrific attack at Abbey Gate that killed 13 brave American servicemembers and many others has been removed from the battlefield,” Kirby said in a statement to Politico. “He was a key ISIS-K official directly involved in plotting operations like Abbey Gate, and now is no longer able to plot or conduct attacks.”

The outlet said U.S. officials declined to tell them when this alleged Taliban raid had occurred or to name the purported terrorist who was killed, pointing to “sensitivities.”

Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary tweeted in late April 2023 that the actual mastermind behind the attack was ISIS-K terrorist Maulawi Rajab – who had not been killed by the Taliban.

“The mastermind of Abbey Gate attack was Salahudin aka Rajab," Sarwary said. "Salahudin was trained by AQ [Al-Qaeda] In Waziristan and joined the HQN [Haqqani Network] in 2009. He worked for several years under Tajmir Jawad, the GDI [Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence] Deputy with links to AQ. Salahudin later became in-charge for Kabul Katiba of the ISKP with direct link to the ISIS Core. There is no report that he was either targeted or killed by the Taliban.”

Sarwary also said: “Instead, many reports suggest his close ties with the HQN and GDI. Salahudin also led and organized the attack on Muzamel, the Taliban’s governor for Balkh. Tajmir Jawad flew from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif to provide Salahudin a safe exit to Faryab and then to Herat. To conclude, there is no single report about Salahudin’s death. The man who is supposed to be the mastermind of the Kabul airport Abbey gate attack was Doctor Hussain the head of ISKP Katiba for Herat and he was killed two weeks ago but he is not the mastermind of the deadly attack.”

Blinken had announced back in November 2021 that Rajab had been sanctioned as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, saying that “Maulawi Rajab, also known as Maulawi Rajab Salahudin, is a senior leader of ISIS-K in Kabul Province, Afghanistan. Rajab plans ISIS-K’s attacks and operations and commands ISIS-K groups conducting attacks in Kabul.”

The UN Security Council announced in late April 2023 that Rajab had been added to the ISIS-K sanctions list.

Afghan general Sami Sadat, the former commanding general of the Afghan National Special Operations Corps prior to the Taliban takeover, argued at the time that “the mastermind of HKIA Abbey Gate attack is Abdullah Omar Bajawari. He leads ISKP intel & is in Kunar AFG. It’s disgraceful & disturbing to close the case of 173 Afghans & 13 Marines, while the killer is still alive.”

A propaganda outlet for the Taliban in 2025 sought to rebut the idea that Sharifullah was the mastermind by revealing more of the Taliban’s claims about who they had allegedly killed in April 2023.

Al-Mirsaad is a pro-Taliban media outlet linked to the Taliban government. 

The Middle East Media Research Institute says that it is “linked to the Afghan Taliban’s intelligence directorate.” The Committee to Protect Journalists has assessed that “it is funded and operated by the GDI’s directorate of media and publications and its senior managers are linked to the interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani.”

“Al-Mirsaad, citing its sources, reports that Muhammad Sharif was not the mastermind behind the Kabul airport attack,” the pro-Taliban group wrote.

The Taliban outlet said that in early April 2023, the Taliban’s special forces “killed an individual named Dr. Hussain” and claimed that “Dr. Hussain was in charge of ISIS-K’s Suicide Brigade and a member of the group’s leadership council.”

The Taliban media arm also claimed that, a few days later, the Taliban GDI had carried out an operation which “resulted in the death of an ISIS member named Abdullah Kabuli” and contended that “at the time of his death, Kabuli was overseeing ISIS-K’s Migration Department.”

“Following the deaths of Dr. Hussain and Abdullah Kabuli, a White House spokesperson confirmed that the individuals were the masterminds behind the Kabul Airport attack and were killed in operations conducted by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the pro-Taliban outlet said.

Possibility of Abbey Gate collusion between Taliban, ISIS-K raised for years

The day of the bombing, Biden Administration officials quickly denied that there had been collusion between the Taliban and ISIS-K and defended the U.S. decision to coordinate with the Taliban members on airport security. 

President Joe Biden immediately claimed he had seen “no evidence” of “collusion between the Taliban and ISIS in carrying out what happened today.”

The Pentagon under Biden argued that the 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.

Sharifullah’s defense team last month interviewed an Afghan-American interpreter who discussed the hostility of the Haqqani Taliban forces that he had personally witnessed at Abbey Gate, and the defense team also read into the record the summaries of multiple U.S. intelligence report summaries which all pointed to the Haqqani Taliban and its leaders facilitating the bombing in some form.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, said in September 2021 that it was at least “possible” that the Taliban allowed the ISIS-K attacker through their security perimeter “on purpose.” But he argued that “the body of intelligence indicates that is not in fact what happened.” 

The general argued in his memoir, “I am certain that the Taliban did not cooperate or assist any ISIS-K attacker with their planning or execution over the course of the evacuation.”

The UN sanctions monitoring team said in 2020 that some countries noted that most ISIS-K attacks include “involvement, facilitation, or the provision of technical assistance” by the Haqqani Network, and that ISIS-K “lacked the capability to launch complex attacks in Kabul on its own” without Haqqani help. The UN team also said it had “viewed communication intercepts in the wake of attacks that were claimed by ISIS-K that were traceable to known members of the Haqqani Network.”

The UN team said that some countries “have reported tactical or commander-level collaboration between ISIL-K and the Haqqani Network.” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that “we strongly reject this propaganda” and that “we have nothing in common (and don’t operate cells) with Daesh [ISIS-K].”

Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan through July 2021, told Congress in 2024 that “I could never verify a Haqqani-ISIS nexus.”

Major Gen. Buck Elton and Captain Joshua Fruth assessed in late 2021 that “the Taliban may have leveraged ISIS–K as a proxy strawman layer of separation to oversee and/or facilitate the attack on U.S. service members and Afghan civilians” at the airport.

Sarah Adams, an alumni of the CIA who has investigated the Abbey Gate attack, argued in 2024 that they “had two joint masterminds” – Sirajuddin Haqqani, the current Taliban interior minister and the leader of the terrorist Haqqani Network, and Sanaullah Ghafari, believed to be a former mid-level Haqqani commander and the current leader of ISIS-K.

A report that she helped author in 2024 argued that “Sirajuddin oversaw overall planning, logistical support, and facilitation, while Sanaullah focused on developing the tactical attack plan.” The report also said that “Abdullah Omar Bajawari, ISKP's head of intelligence, was also involved in the planning, along with Rajab Salahuddin, alias Mawlawi Hanas, who was tasked with preparing the suicide bomber for the mission.”

The report also claimed that the Haqqani Taliban commanders at the airport also helped facilitate the bombing.

West Point’s Counterterrorism Center published an article in 2022 stating that Ghafari had joined “Taliban factions affiliated with the Haqqani network” and “had close links to the Haqqani network’s senior commanders, Taj Mir Jawad and Qari Baryal, who ran terrorist networks in the capital.”

Taj Mir Jawad had been picked to be the deputy chief of intelligence for the Taliban-led government in September 2021, and Qari Baryal was selected to be the governor of Kabul province by the Taliban in November 2021.

Thus, not only was ISIS-K leader Ghafari closely tied to the Haqqani Network as a general matter, but he also had a close personal history to two Taliban officials who went on to be key leaders in the Taliban’s ruling regime.

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 in Taliban-controlled Kabul. The U.S. military relied upon the Taliban – including the Haqqani Network – to provide security outside the airport while it conducted the evacuation. The Taliban, a Sunni Islamist nationalist movement, took control of Afghanistan about a week before the bombing.

Both ISIS-K and U.S. Central Command identified the airport bomber as Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an ISIS-K militant whom the Taliban had released from prison at Bagram Air Force Base days before the attack.

The Pentagon under War Secretary Pete Hegseth is conducting a review of the debacle, and a report is expected to be released this summer.