Lindh, a Bay Area native, was the first convict in the “War on Terror.”
By Rachel Weiner Rachel Weiner Local reporter covering federal court in Alexandria, Va. and local court in Arlington and Alexandria. Email Bio Follow May 23 at 5:00 AM John Walker Lindh, the first person to be convicted of a crime in the “War on Terror,” was set to leave prison a free man Thursday after 17 years behind bars.
“I did not go to fight against America, and I never did,” Lindh told U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria at the time. “I have never supported terrorism in any form, and I never will. . . . I made a mistake by joining the Taliban. Had I realized then what I know now, I would never have joined them.”
John Walker Lindh is seen in this undated photo from a religious school where he studied for five months in Pakistan. In a letter to the court Monday, Spann’s father asked Ellis to investigate a 2016 intelligence report that, according to the publication Foreign Policy, said Lindh has “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.”
In prison, he has remained religiously doctrinaire. Going by Yayyah Lindh, he successfully challenged a policy of strip-searching detainees in his unit before visits, because in Islam “a male person is prohibited from exposing the area of his body between the navel and the knees.” Lindh now must serve three years of supervised release, during which he cannot hold a passport, use the Internet without monitoring, view extremist or terroristic material, communicate with known extremists or converse online in any language other than English without prior approval. He must undergo mental health treatment.
West also said prosecutors initially wanted to bar Lindh from ever leaving the country again. Lindh refused to sign any agreement that prevented him from making a pilgrimage to Mecca.
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