Who could have seen this coming?
John Walker Lindh – the so-called “American Taliban” – has been released from prison, a move Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared “unconscionable”.
Lindh served 17 years of a 20-year sentence after he was captured in 2001 fighting in Afghanistan.
His early release has sparked fierce criticism, with many believing he still harbours extremist views.
Thank Obama, as usual.
Tony West, a high-powered San Francisco lawyer whose clients have ranged from corporate giants to “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, has been nominated by President Obama as an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
But surely he was cured.
At his sentencing, Lindh admitted to volunteering as a Taliban soldier to help fellow Muslims in their jihad but said he had no intention “to fight against America.”
He said then he condemned “terrorism on every level” — but hasn’t made comments since.
Except there was that 9/11 op-ed in 2021.
American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh has penned an op-ed under the name Yahya Lindh that was published on the day the nation marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11
“During the summer and fall of 2001, I served as a Taliban infantryman in northern Afghanistan. In mid-November of that year, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was on the verge of collapse. Kabul and several other major cities had been overrun by the Northern Alliance, a warlord cartel described by journalist Robert Fisk as “a symbol of massacre, systematic rape, and pillage” that would form the nucleus of America’s collaborationist regime for the next two decades. Our commanders told us that the Taliban had begun to evacuate their forces from urban centers to protect civilians from dangers posed by 15,000-pound Daisy Cutters, Tomahawk cruise missiles, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium munitions. I saw the toll that some of these weapons took on Afghan civilians with my own eyes.”
Lindh’s Islamic name represented his continuing embrace of the religion that had led him to become an enemy of the United States.
So the final act of this drama comes as no surprise. I’m only surprised it appeared in Rolling Stone.
Far from mellowing into middle age, Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts” and “told a television news producer that he would continue to spread violent extremist Islam upon his release,” according to documents from the National Counterterrorism Center obtained by Foreign Policy in 2017. Lindh also expressed support for ISIS.
New court documents suggest that the first prisoner in America’s sprawling “war on terror” may have violated that agreement by meeting with a convicted ISIS supporter in three get-togethers covertly surveilled by the FBI in 2021.
News of Lindh’s meetings surfaced in a dispute over the supervised release of Ali Amin, a convicted ISIS supporter who Lindh allegedly met with over the summer and fall of 2021. Like Lindh, the terms of Amin’s release required him to avoid contact with known extremists. But unlike Lindh, parole officials have moved to send Amin back to jail for the alleged violations…
Amin’s… most serious offense involved recruiting Virginia resident Reza Niknejad to ISIS and helping him join the group in Syria in early 2015. Amin drove Niknejad to Dulles airport for a flight to Turkey where Niknejad crossed over into Syria. Amin also introduced him to an unnamed supporter of the group overseas who helped coordinate his travel into ISIS-held territory in Syria
Getting rid of Lindh so he could go to Iraq or Syria and we could take him out would have been an improvement. Instead, the legal case will drag on some more and the pro-terrorist lobby will come to his defense.
Was the ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh as Bad as We Were Led to Believe? – Daily Beast
Yes, like the rest of his brethren, he was. And, most importantly, he was and is the enemy.
Until we finally internalize that, the Jihad will go on.
