鈥楢merican Taliban鈥 released from jail
Print Edition
John Walker Lindh, the US Muslim convert who came to be known as the 鈥淎merican Taliban鈥 after being captured while fighting in Afghanistan in 2001, was released from prison yesterday after serving 17 years, US media reported.
CNN and The Washington Post reported his early-morning release from the federal high-security prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, quoting his lawyer Bill Cummings.
Cummings told CNN that 38-year-old Lindh, still suspected by some of harboring radical Islamic views, will settle in Virginia under strict probation terms that limit his ability to go online or contact other Islamists.
Known as 鈥淒etainee 001鈥 in the US War on Terror, Lindh鈥檚 early release on an original 20-year sentence has resurrected memories of the September 11 attacks, when he became for many Americans one of the faces of the jihadist threat against the United States.
But his release also underscores the fact that, almost two decades later, the US remains mired in a fight with the Taliban with no end in sight.
Other than that he will settle in Virginia, the state abutting the US capital Washington, there was no information about Lindh鈥檚 plans.
His family, which lives near San Francisco, California, has not recently commented on his case and could not immediately be contacted yesterday.
His release comes amid concerns that he may not have abandoned support for hardline Islamic thinking while incarcerated.
Lindh was released three years earlier for good behavior in a 20-year sentence.
The quiet son of a middle-class couple who lived north of San Francisco, he converted to Islam at 16 years old and traveled in 1998 to Yemen to study Arabic. Lindh returned to Yemen in 2000 and then on to Pakistan to study further in a madrassa, or religious academy.
In mid-2001, ostensibly drawn by stories of the mistreatment of Afghans, he enlisted in the Taliban鈥檚 fight against the Northern Alliance.
As the US intervened in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks in 2001, Lindh was one of the hundreds of Taliban fighters captured by Northern Alliance forces on November 25.
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