| John Phillip Walker Lindh | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 9, 1981 District of Columbia, USA |
| Charge(s) |
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| Penalty | 20 years federal imprisonment |
| Status | Imprisoned in FCI, Terre Haute in Terre Haute, Indiana |
| Parents | Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh |
John Phillip Walker Lindh (born February 9, 1981) is a United States citizen who was captured as an enemy combatant during the United States' 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. He is now serving a 20-year prison sentence in connection with his participation in Afghanistan's Taliban army. He was captured during the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi, a violent Taliban prison uprising during which Central Intelligence Agency officer Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed.
Lindh received training at Al-Farouq, a training camp in Afghanistan associated with Al-Qaeda. There, he attended a lecture by Osama bin Laden and is said to have found him "unimpressive". He was not aware of the planned September 11, 2001 attacks. After the attacks occurred, he continued to stay and fight even after he knew the US was now allied with the Northern Alliance.[1][2] Lindh had previously received training with Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, an internationally designated terrorist organization based in Pakistan.[3][4][5][6]
Lindh went by the name Sulayman al-Faris during his time in Afghanistan, but prefers the name Abu Sulayman al-Irlandi today.[7] In early reports following his capture, he was usually referred to by the news media as just "John Walker".[8]
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Lindh was born in Washington, D.C. to Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh. He was baptized a Catholic,[1] and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. When he was 10 years old, his family moved to San Anselmo, California.[8] Lindh suffered from an intestinal disorder as a child. At age 14, his health improved and he enrolled at Redwood High School as a freshman. He then transferred to Tamiscal High School in the Tamalpais Union High School District, an alternative school offering self-directed, individualized study programs. While there, he studied world culture, including Islam and the Middle East.[8] Lindh subsequently left the school and eventually earned an equivalent of a high school diploma by passing the California High School Proficiency Exam at age 16.
As an adolescent, Lindh participated in IRC chat rooms. He became a devoted fan of hip-hop music, and engaged in extensive discussions on Usenet newsgroups, sometimes pretending to be an African American rapper who would criticize others for "acting black".[9][10] The Spike Lee film Malcolm X impressed him deeply and sparked his interest in Islam.[1]
Although his parents did not officially divorce until 1999, their marriage was in serious trouble throughout Walker's adolescence; his father would often leave their Marin residence for extended periods to live in San Francisco with a male lover.[11][12] Frank Lindh stated that they had been effectively separated since 1997.[13]
In 1997, Lindh officially converted to Islam and began regularly attending mosques in Mill Valley, and later, in nearby San Francisco.[14] In 1998 Lindh traveled to Yemen, and stayed for about 10 months to learn Arabic so that he could read the Qur'an in its original language. He returned to the United States in 1999, living with his family for about eight months before returning to Yemen in February 2000, whence he left for Pakistan to study at a madrassa. While abroad, Lindh sent numerous emails to his family. In one, his father told him about the USS Cole bombing, to which Lindh replied that since the American destroyer was in the Yemen harbor, it was an act of war against Islam and therefore justified. "This raised my concerns", his father told Newsweek, "but my days of molding him were over."[15]
Aged 20, he decided to travel to Afghanistan to fight for the Afghan Taliban government forces against Afghan Northern Alliance fighters.[2] His parents state that he was moved by stories of atrocities allegedly perpetrated by the Afghan Northern Alliance army against civilians. He traveled to Afghanistan in May 2001,[16] contrary to reports after his arrest that implied or stated that he traveled to Afghanistan to kill Americans after 9/11. American soldiers were not deployed in Afghanistan at the time he joined the Taliban government forces; however, he chose to stay and fight after it was known American forces were in country and backing the Northern Alliance.
Tony West, his lawyer, explained it as follows:
"One of the first things he told Army interrogators when they questioned him on December 3 of last year was that after 9/11 happened, he wanted to leave the front lines but couldn't for fear of his life. John never wanted to be in a position where he was opposing the United States (and never thought he would be), and in fact he never opposed any American military."[17]
Despite this assertion, Lindh had multiple opportunities to announce his American citizenship and chose not to do so; he chose to lie and say he was Irish. Even while being interviewed by John Spann he still did not reveal that he is a United States citizen. Though much has been made of the fact that Lindh did meet Osama bin Laden, his association with bin Laden was only a passing encounter and not an affiliation.[1][2]
Lindh was captured on November 25, 2001, by Afghan Northern Alliance forces after his Al-Qaeda foreign fighters unit surrendered at Kunduz after retreating from Takar.[1] He and other fighters were questioned by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers Johnny "Mike" Spann and Dave "Dawson" Tyson at General Dostum's military garrison, Qala-i-Jangi, near Mazār-e Sharīf. As shown on British Channel 4 news, Spann asks Lindh, "Are you a member of the IRA?" He was asked this question because, when questioned by Spann, an Iraqi in the group identified Lindh as an English speaker. Lindh had been told to say he was "Irish" in order to avoid problems.[18] Moments later, around 11 a.m., the makeshift prison was the scene of a violent Taliban uprising, known as the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi, in which Spann was killed along with hundreds of foreign fighters. According to other captives interviewed by Robert Young Pelton for CNN, Lindh was fully aware of the planned uprising, yet remained silent and did not cooperate with the Americans.[18][19]
Sometime during the initial uprising Lindh was shot in the right upper thigh and found refuge in a basement, hiding with a group of Saudi, Uzbek, and Pakistani detainees. On the second day, the Red Cross sent in workers to provide treatment to the wounded and try to get them to surrender. As soon as they entered, they were murdered by those inside.[20] The basement was bombarded with repeated RPG and grenade attacks, as well as fuel being poured into the basement and set alight.[1] He was found seven days later on December 2, 2001, when Northern Alliance forces diverted an irrigation stream into the middle of the camp in an attempt to flush the remaining prisoners out of their underground shelters, drowning many in the process.[20] Lindh and about 80 survivors from the original 300 were forced out of hiding and recaptured, with the Northern Alliance captors then tightly binding Lindh's elbows behind his back.
Shortly after his recapture, Lindh was noticed and interviewed by Pelton, who was working as an embedded journalist and stringer for CNN. Lindh initially gave his name as "Abd-al-Hamid" but later gave his birth name. Pelton brought a medic and food for Lindh and interviewed him about how he got there. While under the influence of morphine,[1] Lindh stated that he was a member of al-Ansar, a group of Arabic-speaking fighters financed by Osama bin Laden. Lindh said that the prison uprising was sparked by some of the prisoner guards smuggling grenades into the basement, "This is against what we had agreed upon with the Northern Alliance, and this is against Islam. It is a major sin to break a contract, especially in military situations".[21] A US Army Special Forces operator, fresh from 3 weeks of combat, then gave up his bed so that the wounded Lindh could sleep there.[18][22][23][24] Repeatedly Pelton asked Lindh if he wanted to call his parents or have Pelton do so, but Lindh declined. Pelton knew Lindh was receiving his first medical treatment since being shot in the leg more than a week prior and had been given morphine by a medic prior to Pelton's interview; however, medically speaking, morphine in the doses given as analgesia for a gunshot wound would not be strong enough to produce the mental effects necessary to prevent him from understanding Pelton's repeated questions as to whether or not he wanted to make contact with them. Lindh's parents maintain that Pelton acquired footage that was prejudicial and manipulative, and that Pelton contributed to the poor image of their son by sharing the footage with the world community without context.
Upon his capture, Lindh was given basic first aid and then questioned for a week at Mazār-e Sharīf, before being taken to Camp Rhino on December 7, 2001, the bullet still within his thigh.[25][26] When Lindh arrived at Camp Rhino he was stripped and he was restrained to a stretcher, blindfolded and placed in a metal shipping container, which was procedure for dealing with a potentially dangerous detainee associated with a terrorist organization.[24] While bound to the stretcher his picture was taken by American military personnel.[27] At Camp Rhino he was given Tylox for pain and Valium.[23] He was later to complain that every day passing US military personnel hammered on the sides of the shipping container, shouting abuse and threats.
On December 8 and 9 he was interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[26] He was held at Camp Rhino until he was transferred to the USS Peleliu on December 14, 2001 with other wounded detainees, where his wound was operated on and he received further care.[28]
He was interrogated before the operation on December 14. While on the Peleliu, he signed confession documents while he was held by the United States Marine Corps and informed his interrogators that he was not merely Taliban but al-Qaeda, though his father later asserted he was not involved in, and unaware of, al-Qaeda. On December 31, 2001, he was transferred to the USS Bataan, where he was held until January 22, 2002, when he was flown off the Bataan to begin the journey back to the United States to face criminal charges. While on the USS Bataan, Attorney General John Ashcroft, on January 16, 2002, announced that Lindh would be tried in the United States.
His attorney claimed to the press that he asked for a lawyer repeatedly before being interviewed but he did not get one, and that "highly coercive" prison conditions forced Lindh to waive his right to remain silent. Although the FBI asked Jesselyn Radack, a Justice Department ethics advisor, whether Lindh could be questioned without a lawyer present, her advice that this should not be done was not followed.
On February 5, 2002, Lindh was indicted by a federal grand jury on ten charges:[29]
If convicted of these charges, Lindh could have received up to three life sentences and 90 additional years in prison. On February 13, 2002, he pleaded not guilty to all 10 charges.[29] The court scheduled an evidence suppression hearing, at which Lindh would have been able to testify about the details of the torture to which he claimed he was subjected. The government faced the problem that a key piece of evidence — Lindh's confession — might be excluded from evidence as having been forced under duress (i.e. torture).
Michael Chertoff, then-head of the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice, then directed the prosecutors to offer Lindh a plea bargain, to which, Lindh would plead guilty to two charges: — supplying services to the Taliban (, , 31 C.F.R. 545.204, and 31 C.F.R. 545.206a) and carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony (). He would have to consent to a gag order that would prevent him from making any public statements on the matter for the duration of his 20-year sentence, and he would have to drop any claims that he had been mistreated or tortured by U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan and aboard two military ships during December 2001 and January 2002. In return, all other charges would be dropped. The gag order was supposedly at the request of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.[1]
Lindh accepted this offer. On July 15, 2002, he entered his plea of guilty to the two remaining charges. The judge asked Lindh to say, in his own words, what he was admitting to. Lindh's allocution went as follows: "I plead guilty", he said. "I provided my services as a soldier to the Taliban last year from about August to December. In the course of doing so, I carried a rifle and two grenades. I did so knowingly and willingly knowing that it was illegal." Lindh further commented that he "went to Afghanistan with the intention of fighting against terrorism and oppression," fighting for the suffering of ordinary people at the hands of the Northern Alliance.[1] On October 4, 2002, Judge T.S. Ellis, III formally imposed the sentence: 20 years without possibility of parole.[30]
As another result of Lindh's plea bargain, a Son of Sam law was invoked. Any and all profits made from book deals or any movies about Lindh's experience will be automatically handed over to the federal government. Lindh, his family, his relatives, his associates and his friends will be unable to profit financially from his crimes and/or experiences. Lindh's attorney, James Brosnahan, said Lindh would be eligible for release in 17 years, with good behavior. This is because, although there is no parole under federal law, his sentence could be reduced by 15 percent, or three years, for good behavior. Lindh also agreed to cooperate "fully, truthfully and completely" with both military intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the terrorism investigation.[30]
In January 2003, Lindh was sent to the U.S. Penitentiary, Victorville, a high-security facility northeast of Los Angeles. On March 3, 2003, Lindh was tackled by inmate Richard Dale Morrison, who assaulted Lindh as he knelt in prayer and then ran away, leaving Lindh with bruises on his forehead. On July 2, 2003, Morrison was charged with a misdemeanor count of assault.
Lindh was held in Federal Supermax ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado for a short time. He is currently serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terre Haute, Indiana[31] in the Communication Management Unit.[32] In April 2007, citing the reduced sentence for the Australian prisoner David Matthew Hicks, Lindh's attorneys made a public plea for a Presidential commutation to lower his 20-year sentence. In January 2009, the Lindh family's petition for clemency was denied by President Bush in one of his final acts in office. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, all "special administrative measures" in place against Lindh expired on March 20, 2009, as part of a gradual easing of restrictions on him.[33]
In 2010, Lindh and Syrian-American prisoner Enaam Arnaout sued to lift restrictions on group prayer by Muslim inmates in the Communication Management Unit.[32]
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