Abbey Gate trial hits crossroads as judge weighs acquittal for ISIS-K defendant before jury decides

A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, is now weighing whether to toss the case against an alleged ISIS-K operative charged in connection with the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing, after the Justice Department rested its case Thursday and the defense immediately moved for acquittal.

Mohammad Sharifullah, also known as "Jafar," faces a single count of providing and conspiring to provide material support and resources to ISIS-K resulting in death. If convicted, he faces a potential life sentence. But after a week of government testimony and evidence, including recordings of Sharifullah's own alleged confessions, his defense lawyer argued the prosecution failed to corroborate its claims and asked Judge Anthony Trenga to end the trial before jurors ever deliberate.

The stakes could hardly be higher. The Abbey Gate suicide bombing on Aug. 26, 2021, killed 11 Marines, one Army soldier, one Navy corpsman, and an estimated 170 Afghan civilians during the chaotic final evacuation from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Dozens of other U.S. troops and scores of Afghans were wounded. Gold Star family members have sat in the courtroom gallery throughout the proceedings, as Just the News reported.

What the government presented, and what the defense says it didn't

From Monday afternoon through Thursday, government witnesses testified and prosecutors played recordings of Sharifullah's statements to investigators. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gibbs told the court in his opening argument Monday that Sharifullah had previously told a reporter he wanted to strike at "the Crusaders" and got his chance with Abbey Gate. Gibbs said the defendant provided "granular detail" about his alleged participation in attacks and identified a photo of Abdul Rahman al-Logari, the ISIS-K suicide bomber who carried out the Abbey Gate blast.

The FBI has said Sharifullah confessed to conducting "route reconnaissance" in the lead-up to the attack and to roles in other operations, including a June 2016 suicide bombing that killed more than 10 guards protecting the Canadian embassy in Kabul. Prosecutors also pointed to a business card allegedly seized from an ISIS-K safehouse as additional evidence. Gibbs argued that it is a "crime to provide material support to an FTO like ISIS-K" and that Sharifullah's confession, combined with the evidence, sufficiently corroborated the charge.

Defense lawyer Geremy Kamens saw it differently. He did not dispute the horror of what happened at Abbey Gate.

"We know a lot about the Abbey Gate attack.... It was horrific. The question in this case is not really about what happened. But about who is responsible.... Mr. Sharifullah had nothing to do with the actual attack that day. The U.S. government got the wrong man."

Kamens argued that no testimony connected any route scouting by Sharifullah to the actual route taken by al-Logari to the airport gate. He told the court there were two main routes to the airport that day and that the bomber's exact path remained unknown. In his telling, the government's case rested too heavily on an uncorroborated confession.

The Taliban angle and the 'inside job' theory

The defense raised a provocative alternative theory. Kamens told the court that as the Taliban swept into Kabul in mid-August 2021, the militant group emptied prisons, including Bagram Air Base and Pul-e-Charkhi prison near Kabul, where Sharifullah had been held since his 2019 arrest. Al-Logari, the suicide bomber, had also been freed from a prison at Bagram during that same period.

Kamens then pointed to something the U.S. military did next. He told the court that the Taliban offered to help with security around the airport, and that Rear Admiral Pete Vasely accepted their offer.

"Then something crazy happened.... The Taliban offered to help. Then something crazier happened: Rear Admiral Pete Vasely accepted their offer of help."

Kamens argued that the Taliban militants stationed around the airport "were no ordinary Taliban soldiers" but members of the Haqqani Network. He said "it is extremely likely that this was an inside job" and that it was "done with the help of the Haqqani Network." The defense lawyer called the idea that Sharifullah's alleged route scouting was the but-for cause of the bombing something that "makes no sense."

The Pentagon under President Biden had argued the Abbey Gate attack was not preventable. That claim has long drawn skepticism from Gold Star families and congressional investigators who believe the disastrous withdrawal created the conditions for the attack. The broader question of accountability, military, political, and now legal, has haunted the case from the start.

How Sharifullah ended up in a Virginia courtroom

President Trump announced Sharifullah's capture at a joint session of Congress in March of last year. Pakistani intelligence, with alleged help from U.S. spy agencies, apprehended him. Trump called Sharifullah "the top terrorist responsible for that atrocity" and thanked Pakistan for "helping arrest this monster."

FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted shortly after the announcement:

"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."

The FBI said Sharifullah was recruited into ISIS-K around 2016 and was imprisoned in Afghanistan from approximately 2019 until about two weeks before the Kabul airport attack. Prosecutors told the court that "almost as soon as he was released," Sharifullah linked up with ISIS-K again. He was read his Miranda rights by the FBI in March before making statements to investigators.

Sharifullah has pleaded not guilty. Beyond the Abbey Gate charge, he also allegedly claimed to have trained ISIS-K gunmen for a deadly 2024 attack on a concert hall in Moscow. The head of ISIS-K, Sanaullah Ghafari, still carries a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

A judge with a serious résumé weighs a serious motion

Judge Trenga, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by President George W. Bush, has served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court since May 2020 and as its presiding judge since May 2023. He is no stranger to sensitive national security cases.

When the defense moved for acquittal Thursday, Trenga acknowledged the gravity of the moment. He told the courtroom the case "presents substantial legal and factual issues." He said he would review the defense team's full motion, give the Justice Department time to file a rebuttal, and then make a decision, but would allow the case to proceed at least for now. On Monday, Trenga had predicted the trial would last five to seven trial days and noted that proceedings would not be held this coming Friday.

The Justice Department's handling of high-profile prosecutions has drawn intense scrutiny in recent years, and this case is no exception. The question of whether the government can prove that Sharifullah's alleged reconnaissance was the but-for cause of the bombing, rather than just one thread in a broader ISIS-K operation, sits at the center of the legal dispute.

A judgment of acquittal, if granted, would end the case before the jury ever votes. It would also raise difficult questions about whether the government moved too quickly to charge a single defendant with a crime of this magnitude, or whether the evidence simply couldn't survive the courtroom standard of proof.

The recent pattern of major cases collapsing or being reversed at the federal level has already shaken public confidence in the Justice Department's ability to see complex prosecutions through. For the families of the 13 service members killed at Abbey Gate, this trial was supposed to be a step toward accountability, not another exercise in institutional frustration.

What remains unanswered

Several questions hang over the case. What exact evidence, beyond the alleged confession and a business card, did prosecutors introduce to corroborate Sharifullah's role? What route did the suicide bomber actually take to Abbey Gate? And if the defense theory about Haqqani Network involvement has merit, why hasn't the U.S. government pursued that angle more aggressively?

The Justice Department's credibility in politically sensitive prosecutions is already under a microscope. If this case falls apart, not because the Abbey Gate bombing didn't happen, but because the government couldn't prove the right man did it, the failure will land squarely on the prosecutors who built the case.

Gold Star families who lost sons and daughters at that airport gate deserve more than a trial that ends in a legal technicality. They deserve a government that gets it right, from the battlefield to the courtroom.