A federal judge ruled Monday that there was “probable cause” to continue detaining Mohammad Sharifullah, the confessed ISIS-K terrorist charged in the Abbey Gate attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, with questions about Pakistan front-and-center during the criminal hearing featuring FBI testimony.

Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick of the U.S. District Court for Western Virginia, who is handling the early court proceedings against Sharifullah, ruled that "I do find probable cause" to continue to hold him for his alleged role as a co-conspirator in the suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members on August 26, 2021. The ruling was in the form of a "minute order," meaning it does not go into any detail of the facts alleged, but is simply a form that indicates that "probable cause" was found.

The hearing included testimony from an FBI agent on the witness stand and new details about the role played by Pakistan in capturing and interrogating Sharifullah.

The bearded Sharifullah entered the courtroom Monday in a green-gray jumpsuit and listened to the proceedings through a Dari language interpreter. The Justice Department prosecutors were Michael Ben'Ary, Ryan White, and Troy Edwards. Two federal public defenders, Lauren Rosen and Geremy Kamen, represented the ISIS-K member. 

Interviewed by FBI five times after arrest

Fitzpatrick ruled that Sharifullah should be kept behind bars for now, but also allowed — over objections from the DOJ — questions from the defense, which resulted in new information on Sharifullah’s time in Pakistan before being sent to the United States. Sharifullah's capture in a joint effort between Pakistani intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency was announced by President Donald Trump at a joint session of Congress last week. Trump had thanked Pakistan for “helping arrest this monster.”

FBI special agent Seth Parker, who authored the affidavit underpinning the criminal charges against Sharifullah, took the witness stand on Monday. He said he had spent 12 years in the FBI, and that he is assigned to the FBI Washington Field Office on a squad investigating overseas terrorism. He said he has been working on the investigation related to Abbey Gate “on and off since the attack.”

Parker said the FBI had conducted five interviews of Sharifullah — two in Pakistan, two on the aircraft when Sharifullah was transported to the U.S., and one in Virginia — and that while only the first two interviews are reflected in the criminal affidavit he had written, nothing substantially new emerged in the other interviews.

It was previously revealed that Sharifullah confessed to the FBI that he played a key role in the infamous bombing of Abbey Gate, and also claimed to have trained ISIS-K gunmen for a deadly attack on a concert hall in Moscow in 2024 and had facilitated a bombing targeting Canadian embassy security guards in Kabul in 2016.

The FBI agent was asked by the defense team if Sharifullah had been interviewed by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (Pakistan’s top intelligence agency), but the DOJ lawyers immediately objected that the agent’s answer could interfere with “certain relationships” with “foreign partners.” The defense lawyers said the circumstances surrounding the terrorist’s capture and detention were relevant, and the judge agreed because the answer would go to the “reliableness” of Sharifullah’s admissions.

FBI agent: "No injuries reported to me"

Parker said Sharifullah was “in the custody of Pakistani services” at a Pakistani airbase near Quetta, the capital city of the Pakistani province of Balochistan, but said “I cannot attest to anything that happened prior to him being interviewed by the FBI.” When asked, Parker did not specifically confirm that it had been the Pakistani ISI. The defense asked if the terrorist was tortured while in Pakistani custody, and Parker said that he did not know if Sharifullah was tortured or if the FBI was listening in on Pakistan’s interrogation of Sharifullah. 

During questioning by DOJ prosecutors, the FBI agent said that a medical professional checked on Sharifullah during his flight to the U.S. and that “no injuries were reported to me.” The FBI agent also said Sharifullah had told investigators that he had been living in Quetta with his wife and children for several years where he had been selling livestock. The FBI agent also told the federal prosecutors that Sharifullah said he was doing work on behalf of ISIS-K while in Quetta.

Parker said he didn’t recall whether Sharifullah said he was threatened by Pakistani law enforcement, nor did he recall whether Sharifullah allegedly said his wife and children were also arrested by the Pakistanis. He did recall that Sharifullah had said his wife was eight months pregnant.

Sharifullah starts talking

The FBI has said Sharifullah was read his "Miranda rights" by the FBI and he proceeded to tell them he was recruited into ISIS-K around 2016. The FBI said the terrorist was imprisoned in Afghanistan from approximately 2019 until two weeks before the Kabul airport attack. An ISIS-K suicide bomber named Abdul Rahman al-Logari — who had been freed by the Taliban from a prison at Bagram Air Base in mid-August 2021, mere weeks after the U.S. abandoned the base — has been identified as having carried out the suicide attack at Abbey Gate. The FBI said Sharifullah recognized Logari as an ISIS-K operative he had known while in prison.

Parker answered “yes” on Monday when asked by the defense if the only evidence in the criminal affidavit linking Sharifullah to the Abbey Gate attack were admissions that the terrorist made during the FBI's interrogations. Sharifullah has been charged with providing material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, and he faces a potential life sentence.

The FBI has said Sharifullah was contacted by another ISIS-K member upon being freed from prison in mid-August 2021 who linked Sharifullah up with the ISIS-K plot to attack U.S. forces at Hamid Karzai International Airport. The bureau said ISIS-K members provided Sharifullah with a motorcycle, funds for a cell phone, and instructions on using social media to communicate with them in the lead-up to the attack. 

Reconnaissance missions

The FBI agent confirmed Monday that Sharifullah was — as he confessed — involved in “route reconnaissance” in the lead-up to the Abbey Gate attack, and said that “according to him, no” Sharifullah was not involved in actually planning the attack. Parker said that “according to him [Sharifullah], he didn’t know the specificity of the target.” Trump said last Tuesday that "we have just apprehended the top terrorist responsible for that atrocity.”

Parker said his FBI colleagues had Sharifullah draw a map of the reconnaissance mission he claimed to have carried out, and said the mission that Sharifullah spoke of was near Kabul airport but only up to a traffic circle near Abbey Gate. The FBI agent said that “I couldn’t give an exact distance from the traffic circle to Abbey Gate.”

President Biden announced the unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in an April 2021 speech, setting the withdrawal deadline for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. The Taliban were sparked into rapid military operations, conducted a rapid takeover of the countryside in the ensuing months and swept into the Afghan capital of Kabul on August 15, 2021. The chaotic and deadly non-combatant evacuation operation by the U.S. was conducted while the U.S. military relied upon a hostile Taliban to provide security outside the airport. 

Sharifullah had made his first court appearance last week after he landed at Washington Dulles International Airport, and he was ordered into federal custody, where he remains for the foreseeable future. The Monday hearing was held in a decently crowded courtroom — with prosecutors and agents, a trio of U.S. Marshals in windbreakers, media and members of the public onlooking — in a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. 

After the hearing, Just the News asked Sharifullah’s legal team outside the courtroom if they believed their client was innocent or guilty of the crimes of which he is accused. The response was: “no comment.”