A suspected senior planner in the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 American service members during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has been taken into custody and will appear Wednesday in federal court in the United States to face charges.
President Donald Trump announced the arrest during his Tuesday night address to Congress, with the White House and the Justice Department subsequently identifying the suspect as Mohammad Sharifullah. Officials accuse him of being a member of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate, known as ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, and say he admitted his role in that attack and others during an interview with FBI agents on Sunday after being taken into custody.
Senior Pakistani intelligence officers on Wednesday confirmed the arrest and said Sharifullah, also known as Jafar, was captured in the country’s restive southwest Balochistan province near the border with Afghanistan after multiple operations had failed to seize him. The officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said Sharifullah had joined the militant group in 2016 and was involved in numerous attacks across Afghanistan.
