John Philip Walker Lindh (born February 9, 1981) is an American Taliban member who was captured by United States forces as an enemy combatant during the United States' invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. He was detained at Qala-i-Jangi fortress, used as a prison. He denied participating in the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi, a violent uprising of the Taliban prisoners, stating that he was wounded in the leg and hid in the cellar of the Pink House, in the southern half of the fort. He was one of the 86 prisoners who survived the uprising, from an estimated 400 prisoners in total. CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed during that uprising. Brought to trial in United States federal court in February 2002, Lindh accepted a plea bargain; he pleaded guilty to two charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released on supervision on May 23, 2019, for a three-year period of supervised release.
In 1997, at the age of 16, Lindh converted to Islam. He began regularly attending mosques in Mill Valley and later in nearby San Francisco. 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.
A convert to Sunni Islam in California at age 16, Lindh traveled to Yemen in 1998 to study Arabic and stayed there for 10 months. He later returned in 2000, then went to Afghanistan to aid the Taliban in fighting against the Afghan Northern Alliance. He received training at Al-Farouq, a training camp associated with al-Qaeda, designated a terrorist organization by the United States and other countries. While at the camp, he attended a lecture by Osama bin Laden. After the 9/11 attacks, he remained with the Taliban military forces despite learning that the U.S. had become allied with the Northern Alliance. Lindh had previously received training with Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, an internationally designated terrorist organization based in Pakistan.
Lindh returned to Yemen in February 2000 and left for Pakistan to study at a madrasa. While abroad, Lindh exchanged numerous emails with his family. In one, his father told him about the USS Cole bombing, to which Lindh replied that the American naval destroyers being in the Yemen harbor had been an act of war, and that the bombing was justified. "This raised my concerns," his father told Newsweek, "but my days of molding him were over."
At the age of 20, Lindh decided to travel to Afghanistan to fight for the Afghan Taliban government forces against Northern Alliance fighters. His parents said that he was moved by stories of atrocities allegedly perpetrated by the Northern Alliance army against civilians. He traveled to Afghanistan in May 2001. Tony West, his lawyer, explained it as follows: "One of the first things he told Army interrogators when they questioned him on December 3, 2001, 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."
Lindh surrendered on November 24, 2001, to Afghan Northern Alliance forces after his Al Qaeda foreign fighters unit surrendered at Kunduz after retreating from Takar. He and other fighters were to be questioned by the CIA officers Johnny "Mike" Spann and David Tyson at General Dostum's military garrison, Qala-i-Jangi, near Mazār-e Sharīf. During the initial questioning, Lindh was not advised of his rights and his request for a lawyer was denied.
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. Lindh could plead guilty to two charges: supplying services to the Taliban (50 U.S.C. § 1705(b), 18 U.S.C. § 2, 31 CFR 545.204, and 31 CFR 545.206) and carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony (18 U.S.C. § 844(h)(2)). 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 said to be at the request of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Sometime during the initial uprising, Lindh was shot or hit by shrapnel in the right upper thigh and found refuge in a basement, hiding with the rest of the detainees. On the second day, the Red Cross sent in workers to collect the dead. As soon as they entered, the workers were shot by the prisoners, who killed one. The Northern Alliance repeatedly bombarded the area with RPGs and grenade attacks, and burning fuel poured in. Finally, on December 2, 2001, Northern Alliance forces diverted an irrigation stream into the middle of the camp to flush the remaining prisoners out of their underground shelters, drowning many in the process. Lindh and about 85 survivors from the original 300–500 were forced out of hiding. Northern Alliance soldiers bound Lindh's elbows behind his back.
After capture, Lindh was given basic first aid and questioned for a week at Mazār-e Sharīf. He was taken to Camp Rhino on December 7, 2001, the bullet or piece of shrapnel still within his thigh. When Lindh arrived at Camp Rhino, he was stripped and restrained on 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. On the day he left the Turkish School, he was photographed with the words "Shit Head" written onto duct tape on his blindfold by Green Berets posing for a "team photo" with their captive. The Green Berets, from ODA 592, were later investigated. While bound to the stretcher at Camp Rhino, Lindh was photographed by some American military personnel. At Camp Rhino, he was given oxycodone/paracetamol for pain and diazepam.
On December 8 and 9, he was interviewed by the FBI and was mirandized on December 9 or 10. 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. 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. On December 31, 2001, Lindh was transferred to the USS Bataan, where he was held until January 22, 2002. He was flown back to the United States to face criminal charges. On January 16, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Lindh would be tried in the United States.
In 2002, former President George H. W. Bush referred to Lindh as "some misguided Marin County hot-tubber". The comment, in which Bush also mispronounced the county's name, provoked a minor furor and prompted a retraction of the statement by Bush. Lindh's attorneys told the press that his client had asked for a lawyer repeatedly before being interviewed by the FBI, but 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 adviser, whether Lindh could be questioned without a lawyer present, they did not follow her advice to avoid that scenario.
On February 5, 2002, Lindh was indicted by a federal grand jury on ten charges:
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. 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 coerced.
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: "I plead guilty. 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 said 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. On October 4, 2002, Judge T.S. Ellis III imposed a sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
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. He assaulted Lindh at prayer, causing bruises on his forehead. On July 2, 2003, Morrison was charged with a misdemeanor count of assault.
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 lessen his 20-year sentence. In January 2009, the Lindh family's petition for clemency was denied by President George W. 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.
In 2010, Lindh and the Syrian-American prisoner Enaam Arnaout sued to lift restrictions on group prayer by Muslim inmates in the Communication Management Unit. On January 11, 2013, a federal judge ruled in their favor, saying that the government had shown no compelling interest in restricting the religious speech of the inmates by prohibiting them from praying together.
Lindh secured Irish citizenship in 2013 through his paternal grandmother, Kathleen Maguire, who was born in Donegal.
In February 2015, Lindh wrote to a California television producer, expressing support for ISIS or the Islamic State, the militant group that had recently beheaded five Westerners in televised executions. Asked if he supported the Islamic State, Lindh, now calling himself "Yahya", Arabic for John, replied in a handwritten letter: "Yes, and they are doing a spectacular job. 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".
In 2017 Foreign Policy magazine reported an internal report by the National Counterterrorism Center asserted Lindh told a visiting television news producer that he had not renounced extremist violence. Lindh was interviewed for the 2016 book The Way of the Strangers: Encounters With the Islamic State by Graeme Wood, on the condition that Wood provide Lindh with "books, treatises, articles, or other writings produced by leaders of the Islamic State and/or scholars affiliated with it (preferably in the original Arabic)." Upon sending the package of literature was blocked from delivery by the prison as it was deemed contraband, however Lindh decided to continue corresponding with Wood, though Lindh later ended the correspondence by saying he was personally a "layman" whose opinions had "no consequence", referring to his knowledge of the Islamic State.
On May 23, 2019, Lindh was released early for good behavior from the Terre Haute, Indiana federal prison prior to the end of his twenty-year sentence, although he accepted several probation requirements due to his continued support of Islamist ideology. These requirements included a ban from internet use and contact with fellow extremists. The probation lasted for the remaining three years of his sentence. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were among many who criticized the release, but Trump said "From a legal standpoint, there's nothing we're allowed to do".