John Walker Lindh, the so-called 'American Taliban', is being let out
of federal prison over three years ahead of schedule, and people want
to know why.
Lindh converted to Sunni Islam at age 16 after dropping out of school and becoming obsessed with hip-hop and the movie Malcom X (he pretended to be a black rapper online and criticized others for "acting black"). Shortly after his father left his mother for another man,
the culturally appropriating Lindh began to attend San Francisco Bay
Area mosques.
After a 10-month trip to Yemen in 1998 to study the
Qur'an, Lindh returned home for eight months, only to return to the
Middle East - eventually winding up in Afghanistan to take up arms against Northern Alliance fighters in May, 2001.
He was captured on November 25, 2001 and held at an a makeshift prison
in Afghanistan, where he would participate in an extremely violent
prisoner uprising (the battle of Qala-i-Jangi) that led to the death of
CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann and hundreds of foreign fighters. Lindh
was one of 86 prisoners who survived after hiding in a basementwith a group of detainees who shot at Red Cross workers sent in to collect the dead, killing one.
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