An Islamic State group member was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison for aiding the terrorist organization that took credit for a suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members and about 160 Afghans at the Kabul airport five years ago during the US military's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mohammad Sharifullah, 28, received the maximum sentence for his one-count conviction in an international terrorism case that President Donald Trump heralded last year during a speech to a joint session of Congress. ## A Jury Deadlock Shaped the Outcome A federal jury in Virginia had convicted Sharifullah in April of providing material support to the IS affiliate known as Islamic State Khorasan Province. Jurors, however, could not agree whether he bore some responsibility for the airport bombing on 26 August 2021, a question that could have brought a possible life sentence had they unanimously decided it. Sharifullah requested a 17-year prison sentence, while prosecutors sought the full 20 years. His lawyers said he was never an ISKP leader and had not been convicted of any conduct related to the airport suicide bombing itself. "He was brought here because the government believed he participated in the Abbey Gate attack, a theory which it was unable to prove at trial," defense attorneys wrote in their filing. Prosecutors countered in their sentencing memo that "from his teenage years, when he pledged an oath of allegiance to [ISKP], Sharifullah's carnage was driven by hate. Hate towards Americans." ## Families Confronted the Defendant in Court Sharifullah did not testify at his trial and declined to address the court before US District Judge Anthony Trenga imposed the sentence. The judge described the defendant as a "dedicated terrorist" who expressed no remorse for the "unfathomable" grief and suffering he caused. Trenga heard victim impact statements from several parents of the US service members. From a podium only a few feet from where Sharifullah sat, they took turns paying tribute to their children and describing how the attack shattered their families. Mark Schmitz of Missouri asked Sharifullah to turn and look at him as he spoke about his 20-year-old son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl Jared Schmitz. "They may have taken his life, but they'll never take his legacy," Mark Schmitz said. "A bomb killed my son. It did not kill what he stood for." Paula Knauss-Selph, whose son, Army Staff Sgt Ryan Knauss, was killed in the Abbey Gate bombing, said the family was "forever changed" by the attack. "No justice will ever be enough to mend my broken heart," she said. ## The Role Prosecutors Outlined US troops were conducting an evacuation operation at Hamid Karzai international airport when a suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device near an entry point known as Abbey Gate. Prosecutors said Sharifullah's role in the attack was scouting a route to the airport for the bomber. According to prosecutors, Sharifullah told a journalist that he wanted to "catch and kill the crusaders" from the United States for invading his country after the attacks of September 11. They also told the court that Sharifullah was involved in dozens of other attacks, including a March 2024 assault on a Moscow concert hall that killed roughly 140 people — one of the deadliest terror attacks in recent Russian history. ## A Case Resting Largely on His Own Words Defense lawyers argued that prosecutors failed to present any evidence tying Sharifullah to the Kabul bombing besides his own statements during hours of FBI questioning. His team said Sharifullah told FBI agents what he thought they wanted to hear, possibly because he feared being tortured in Pakistani custody before he was brought to the United States. A review by US Central Command found that the Abbey Gate bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an IS member who had been released from an Afghan prison by the Taliban. According to an FBI affidavit, Sharifullah recognized the alleged bomber as an operative he had known while incarcerated. ## What the Sentence Means Going Forward The 20-year term closes the US court chapter of a case that became a symbol of the turbulent end of America's longest war. The maximum penalty reflects both the gravity of providing material support to ISKP and the statutory limits of a single-count conviction that stopped short of assigning responsibility for the deaths. For the families who filled the courtroom, the sentencing marked five years of waiting for a measure of accountability. Their statements made clear that the grief described in court — and the legacy the parents invoked — will outlast the sentence handed down in a Virginia federal courtroom on Wednesday. The case also traced the long arc of the withdrawal itself, from the evacuation scenes at Abbey Gate in August 2021 to a Virginia courthouse where jurors, judges and parents revisited the attack in painstaking detail. Sharifullah's legal team signaled that its arguments about the strength of the government's evidence remain intact, while the prosecutors' sentencing memo framed the defendant's oath to ISKP as the driving force behind what they described as years of hatred directed at Americans.