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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — <\/span>U.S. authorities \u201cgot the wrong man\u201d when they charged an alleged Islamic State militant in a deadly suicide bombing at a Kabul airport<\/a> during the American military\u2019s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan<\/a> in 2021, a defense attorney said Monday at the start of the man’s trial in Virginia.<\/p>\n Mohammad Sharifullah is accused of scouting the bomber’s route to the airport before the attack that killed nearly 200 people, including 13 U.S. service members, at the end of America\u2019s longest war. FBI agents interviewed him for hours over the course of several days after his capture.<\/p>\n But one of Sharifullah’s lawyers said he had no role in the bombing plot and suggested that the Afghan national gave a false confession.<\/p>\n \u201cThe U.S. government got the wrong man,\u201d defense attorney Geremy Kamens said during the trial’s opening statements. \u201cThat is why we are proud to represent Mohammad Sharifullah in this trial.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice Department prosecutor John Gibbs said Sharifullah, also known as Jafar, spoke to a journalist about killing American \u201ccrusaders\u201d who invaded his home country after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. <\/p>\n \u201cThe feeling was just to catch the crusaders and kill them,\u201d Sharifullah told the journalist, according to Gibbs.<\/p>\n Sharifullah told FBI agents that he joined an Islamic State regional branch known as ISIS-K around 2016. Although he denied having a planning role in the Kabul airport bombing, he told the agents that he had done \u201ca lot of other things\u201d on behalf of ISIS-K, Gibbs said.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump announced Sharifullah\u2019s capture during his State of the Union address in March 2025. Sharifullah arrived in the U.S. a day later to face prosecution and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.<\/p>\n Twelve jurors and three alternates were picked Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, for Sharifullah’s federal trial on one count of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death. The trial is expected to last about a week.<\/p>\n U.S. troops were conducting an evacuation operation at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021, when a lone suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device near an entry point known as Abbey Gate. Approximately 160 Afghans were killed in the attack along with the 13 U.S. service members.<\/p>\n A review by U.S. Central Command<\/a> found that the Abbey Gate bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State militant who had been released from an Afghan prison by the Taliban. Sharifullah recognized the alleged bomber as an operative he had known while incarcerated, according to an FBI affidavit<\/a>. <\/p>\n A former Marine testified<\/a> to Congress that he and others had spotted two possible suspects behaving suspiciously on the morning of the bombing but didn’t get permission to act. However, the Central Command review concluded that the snipers hadn’t seen the actual bomber and that the attack was not preventable.<\/p>\n Still, the carnage led to sharp criticism of how Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration handled the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after a war spanning two decades. On the campaign trial, before he won a second term in the White House, Trump repeatedly condemned Biden\u2019s role in the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and blamed him for the Abbey Gate attack.<\/p>\n One of the prosecutors assigned to the Abbey Gate case was fired by the Justice Department<\/a> last year after a right-wing commentator publicly criticized him over his work during the Biden administration. Michael Ben\u2019Ary’s ouster was part of a broader purge of Justice Department veterans deemed to be insufficiently loyal to Trump, a Republican.<\/p>\n Sharifullah is accused of participating in other attacks linked to ISIS-K. The FBI said he provided instructions on the proper use of firearms before other ISIS-K members carried out a March 2024 attack at a Moscow concert hall<\/a> that killed roughly 140 people.<\/p>\n Kamens suggested that Sharifullah gave a false confession under duress while in Pakastani custody. The defense lawyer told jurors that the airport bombing was likely an \u201cinside job\u201d aided by sympathetic Taliban extremists who were in power and helping with airport security that day.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Pakistanis wanted him to confess, and their intelligence service tortures people,\u201d Kamens said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n