'American Taliban' released from prison

[mystery-ak]

'American Taliban' released from prison
By Morgan Gstalter - 05/23/19 08:56 AM EDT

John Walker Lindh, known as the “American Taliban,” has been released from prison after 17 years behind bars.

Lindh has served the majority of his 20-year sentence and his early release from federal prison on Thursday in Indiana appears to be for good behavior, CNN reported.


The California native was captured in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at the age of 21. He was the first person to be convicted of a crime in the “War on Terror.” His story made national headlines.

more
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/445170-american-taliban-released-from-prison

[mystery-ak]

‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh: ISIS ‘doing a spectacular job’
by Jerry Dunleavy
 | May 22, 2019 11:06 PM



John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban” fighter set to be released from prison on Thursday, praised ISIS for “doing a spectacular job," newly revealed prison correspondence shows.

The four letters, which Lindh wrote from prison to NBC’s Los Angeles station KNBC in 2014 and 2015, paint a picture of an unrepentant and violent radical.

“The Islamic State is clearly very sincere and serious about fulfilling the long-neglected religious obligation of establishing a caliphate through armed struggle, which is the only correct method,” Lindh said in a 2015 letter.

more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/american-taliban-john-walker-lindh-isis-doing-a-spectacular-job

[mountaineer]

Talibanny Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree
by Mark Steyn
May 23, 2019

John Walker Lindh - or Abdul Hamid, as he may well prefer to be styled - comes out of prison today. At the time we were assured he was just a goofy kid who'd gone off to find himself and accidentally found the Taliban instead. But here we are, eighteen years later, and he's even more fully committed to global jihad than before. And, for some reason, the Irish Government chose to confer citizenship on a convicted jihadist while he was in gaol, so we can at least stop calling him the American Talib and instead refer to him as the Shamrock Talib, or the Emerald Imam or Paddy O'Taliban or some such.   ...

The only distinguishing feature about John Walker is that he's such an obvious compendium of clapped-out clichés from America's Left Coast the wonder is the mullahs didn't automatically take him for a CIA plant.

But no, Mr Walker is for real - born John Lindh in 1981, and from that bastion of well-heeled pothead progressivism, California's affluent Marin County. Just north of San Francisco, Marin is the kind of place where Taleban are rare and Republicans are rarer, and your average hippie-turned-lawyer can stay true to his Sixties values while living on property that stays true to its late Nineties values (average house price: just shy of a million bucks). This is the aging of the dawn of Aquarius: a lotta latte, a little dope, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and everyone likes feeling religious, or at least "spiritual" - old New York Times headline: "Religion Makes A Comeback (Belief To Follow)".

Following the traditional Marin pattern, his parents divorced, his father moved in with another man, his mother converted to Buddhism, and the children were taught Native American spirituality. John was sent to an "alternative" high school. (In the Bay Area, all the high schools are "alternative". The problem for parents is trying to find any alternative to the alternative.) The set texts included The Autobiography Of Malcom X, and John liked it so much that like the late Mr X he too decided to embrace Islam and change his name, to Sulayman. His parents, putting their foot down for what seems to be the first and last time, demanded the right to continue calling him John. They had, after all, gone to the trouble of naming him after one of the colossi of the age, John Lennon. To this, he consented. In return, they let him study at the Mill Valley Islamic Center.  ... 

More at Steyn Online

[rustynail]

Hit him with a milkshake.

[Applewood]

Lindh allegedly will have some restrictions -- for example, he is not allowed to travel outside the US.  I just hope someone keeps an eye on him.  Normally, I wouldn't want that, but I am not convinced he is rehabilitated.  I am convinced that he will, given the opportunity, participate in some way in acts of terrorism.