Alleged mastermind of Crocus City Hall terror attack arrested and charged in US

An alleged member of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) terror organisation has been arrested in the United States and charged with organising the deadly attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in March 2024, among others, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced on Wednesday.

Mohammad Sharifullah confessed to the FBI that he had instructed the perpetrators of the Crocus City Hall attack how to use rifles and other weapons on behalf of the ISIS-K leadership. He also said that he had instructed two of the four gunmen involved in the Moscow attack previously.

According to a DoJ statement, Sharifullah confessed to organising a terrorist attack at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan in 2021 which killed more than 170 people, including 13 American servicemen, saying that he had sought a safe route for suicide bombers into the airport and studied checkpoints so that the attackers wouldn’t be noticed.

Sharifullah also revealed in an interview to the FBI that he was involved in organising a terrorist attack at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul which killed 15 people in June 2016, conducting surveillance of the building, passing information to the suicide bomber, and transporting him to the site.

If found guilty, Sharifullah faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow on 22 March 2024 which killed at least 145 people and injured over 550. Four of the alleged perpetrators were detained the following day in the Bryansk region of western Russia and charged with terror offences, while the number of detainees had risen to 10 by early April.