An American court sentences an Afghan to 20 years in prison for supporting ISIS in Afghanistan

On Wednesday, a US federal court sentenced an Afghan man to 20 years in prison after he was convicted of providing material support to the ISIS branch in Afghanistan, the group responsible for a suicide bombing that killed more than 180 people at Kabul airport in 2021.

A jury in the Alexandria District Court in the Washington suburbs concluded in April that Muhammad Sharifullah, a member of ISIS-K, was guilty of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

But it reached a dead end after two days of deliberations regarding his supposed involvement in the suicide bombing at the airport.

The Public Prosecution sought to convict Sharifullah of involvement in the Kabul airport attack that killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 American soldiers.

On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the maximum penalty imposed on Sharif Allah, which is 20 years imprisonment, which was what the Public Prosecution had requested.

The defense team for Sharif Allah had called for a 17-year sentence, based in particular on his secondary role within ISIS, in addition to the harsh conditions of his detention in Afghanistan and then in Pakistan.

In a speech to Congress last year, President Donald Trump called Sharifullah “the primary terrorist responsible” for the Kabul airport attack.

The Public Prosecution says that Sharifullah reconnoitred the road leading to the airport, where the suicide bomber later detonated his device amid crowds trying to flee days after the Taliban took over Kabul.

The United States withdrew its last soldiers from Afghanistan in August 2021, in a chaotic operation that lasted more than two weeks and included the evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans who flocked to the airport hoping to leave the country.

Pakistan extradited Sharifullah to the United States in March 2025, and he was tried in the city of Alexandria, on the outskirts of the American capital.

US authorities say that Sharif Allah was involved in a number of ISIS-Khorasan attacks from 2016 until his arrest in Pakistan in 2025.

These attacks included a suicide bombing in June 2016 targeting Nepalese guards for the Canadian Embassy in Kabul.

Sharifullah was accused of conducting reconnaissance operations and transporting the bomber to the attack site. He was also accused of giving instructions on the use of weapons to Khorasan Province militants who attacked Crocus City Hall near Moscow in March 2024.