A man suspected of involvement in a bombing attack on a Kabul airport four years ago has confessed to being part of the attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow last March, according to a statement released by the US Department of Justice on Friday.
The suspect, identified as Mohammad Sharifullah, was arrested in Pakistan, as announced by US President Donald Trump in a speech to Congress on Wednesday. According to the president, the detainee is responsible for the deaths of several US military personnel during the chaotic troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency.
According to the White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, Sharifullah confessed to investigators about the airport bombing and his involvement in “other attacks in Russia and Iran” during a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interrogation.
Sharifullah reportedly told the FBI that he had instructed individuals on the use of Kalashnikov assault rifles and other weapons in the name of ISIS-K (Wilayat Khorasan) and recognized two of the four arrested fighters as those he had previously instructed.
The attack on the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, Moscow, occurred on March 22, 2024, when the attackers opened fire on concertgoers with automatic weapons and then set the auditorium on fire, resulting in the deaths of 145 people.
According to FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov, the criminal actions were coordinated over the internet by members of the Wilayat Khorasan group, which is banned in Russia and is based in the Afghan-Pakistani region. Four suspected terrorists were arrested en route to the Russian-Ukrainian border, claiming they had been paid to carry out the attack and had received instructions to flee to Ukraine.