A Troubling Case

By Fareena Alam
Date: 18 June 2007


In January 2002, Q-News carried an exclusive interview with a young American Muslim named Musa Abdun Nur Maguire speaking about his cousin, Sulayman. Both were converts to Islam. Both grew up in upwardly mobile, aspirational, West Coast liberal families who accepted their children's religious changes with genuine openness and respect. So far, so good. The trouble was that Sulayman's other name was John Walker Lindh, dubbed - in the throes of post-9/11 hysteria - the "American Taliban". It was a case that intrigued and troubled us then. It is a case that should trouble all of us now.

Taken prisoner by American forces in December 2001 in Afghanistan, "enemy combatant" John Walker Lindh was the focus of a campaign of disinformation from the start. Musa's description of John's intense spirituality, sensitive political awareness and desire to work for social justice bore little resemblance to the way he was painted in the American media. With the trail of Osama bin Laden going cold, the nation was searching in vain someone else to direct its collective anger and hurt towards. Finding John Walker Lindh was the next best thing. Reports portrayed him as a traitor who wanted to kill American troops, a henchman of al-Qaida, a confidante of OBL himself. In short: a Kurtz-like, brainwashed, terrorist killer. The allegations were so blatantly false that even the United States government couldn't prove them when the Lindh case came before the courts in October 2002. The true story is in fact emblematic of everything that has gone wrong in this so-called "war on terror".

Last week, Frank Lindh - John's father and a San Francisco-based lawyer - came to London to talk about the gross miscarriage of justice that followed his son's capture and the human rights implications of his continued incarceration. The event, Frank Lindh's first lecture in the United Kingdom, was brought together by Q-News in conjunction with Cageprisoners and with support from Islamic Circles and The City Circle. His deeply moving presentation is available as a podcast on iTunes.

Frank Lindh (a practising Catholic) is a warm, straightforward man. His campaign to clear his son's name and gain his release in the face of American public opinion that has been shaped by continued false allegations and reactionary, bully patriotism (of the Rush Limbaugh / Fox News variety) is courageous. The story he tells of John Walker Lindh's journey from the killing fields of Afghanistan to an American prison cell is extraordinary.

Having converted to Islam at the age of 16, after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, John Walker Lindh had travelled to Yemen and later Pakistan to study classical Arabic and Islamic studies - decisions he made with the blessing and permission of his parents and about which he was completely transparent. His parents respected their son's right to choose his own confessional path. His father remarked, reflecting on John's religious transformation, "Islam fit him. It was like he had always been a Muslim."

While in Pakistan, memorising the Quran at a madrassah, he decided that he would volunteer to spend the summer with Afghan armed forces controlled, at that time, by the Taliban who were fighting the Northern Alliance, the tribal warlords involved in their own campaign of murder and plunder. It seems like an unusual, even foolhardy decision. But it's no more a crime than that of thousands of American (and British) who went abroad to fight in the Spanish civil war, or in Bosnia. John later acknowledged: "I want the American people to know that had I realised then what I know now about the Taliban, I would never have joined them."

John's account of his time in Afghanistan has not been disputed by the American authorities who captured and later prosecuted him: John received basic infantry training at a camp funded by Osama bin Laden, who was actively supporting the Taliban government (as was the US government who in April 2001 gave the Taliban government $41 million in aid). The camp was not a terrorist training camp. Those camps were quite separate from the Taliban military infrastructure (for an inside view of what that variety of camp looked like, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's report on one-time Guantanamo detainee Abdur Rehman Khadr is instructive).

The real story of John Lindh's service in the Afghan army is less sexy than the hype that followed: he served sentry and cooking duty in Tahar on the frontlines of the confrontation with the Northern Alliance. It was only after the commencement of American bombing that the Taliban line was broken and John Lindh fled along with other Taliban troops to Kunduz, 60 miles away. American soldiers never served in the Tahar region. It was then that things turned really ugly.

Captured by the brutal warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, John Lindh and his comrades were at first offered safe passage through Northern Alliance territory. This shaky deal fell apart when some Taliban captives became nervous and revolted at the Qala-i-Jhangi fortress where they were being held. John was shot in the leg, but took refuge with the few other survivors in the basement of the fortress. The orders now changed: all the prisoners were to be killed. American (and British) forces looked the other way. After several unsuccessful attempts to take the prisoners, Dostum's forces finally flooded the basement where they were hiding, Most of the injured and weary prisoners drowned. Remarkably, John Walker Lindh survived. Enter the American forces who took possession of him.

Learning of the capture of an American among the Qala-i-Jhangi prisoners, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered military interrogators to "take the gloves off". Locked up in a metal shipping container (similar to the one in which hundreds of Taliban prisoners had died earlier, suffocated and shot to death), blindfolded, duct-taped to a stretcher, taunted and threatened by US soldiers, denied a lawyer, denied access to medical treatment for a festering bullet wound in his leg, denied access to the Red Cross, photographed naked and blindfolded, John Walker Lindh was among the first to experience what post-9/11 American justice would feel like.

The administration relished the capture of Lindh. It was exactly the kind of symbol they needed to sell the "war on terror" to the American public. All kinds of outlandish and false statements were made. President Bush stated emphatically that, "Obviously, Walker is unique in that he's the first American al-Qaida fighter that we have captured." False. Rumsfeld, no doubt gleeful after having ordered the gloves off, said that John Walker Lindh was "captured by US forces with an AK-47 in his hands." False. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert declared Lindh a "terrorist" who belonged to "an organisation that took American lives and came against the American Constitution." False.

Bush's father (the former president) was near hysterical: "I thought of a unique penalty. Make him [John Lindh] leave his hair the way it is and his face as dirty as it is and let him go wandering around this country and see what kind of sympathy he would get."

Bush Sr was only outdone by "liberal-minded" Rudolph Giuliani, then-Mayor of New York: "When you commit treason against the United States of America, particularly at a time when the U.S. is in peril of attack and further attack, I believe the death penalty is the appropriate remedy to consider."

When he was finally brought to trial later that year, nine of the 10 indictments against John Lindh were eventually dropped. That didn't prevent Attorney-General John Ashcroft declaring that Lindh dedicated himself to "killing Americans" - though he must have known that the remaining indictment said nothing about this.

Although he was exonerated of all terrorism-related charges, John was forced into a plea bargain. Already tried and convicted by public opinion, a fair jury trial was deemed impossible and could have resulted in an even worse outcome. John Lindh finally agreed to plead guilty to one crime: breaking the economic sanctions imposed on the Taliban regime - by the Clinton administration. For this he was given a 20-year sentence. Attempts to force John's lawyers to agree to a lifetime travel ban eventually failed: John Lindh insisted that he wanted to leave the US at least once - to go on Hajj, the pilgrimage in Mecca.

John Walker Lindh is now housed in the highest security prison in the United States. He was initially forbidden to speak or pray audibly in Arabic. Even greeting other Muslim prisoners with "Salams" was prohibited. These were part of the "special administrative measures" placed on him. He is now in isolation. Visits with family are highly controlled. He spends his time studying religious texts, memorising the Quran and praying.

John Lindh's case is remarkably similar to that of Yaser Hamdi, an American citizen who also survived the massacre at Qala-i-Jhangi and captured. Hamdi was taken to Guantanamo, but once his US citizenship was discovered, he was shipped to a naval brig in Virginia where he was held as an "enemy combatant". Hamdi's case was finally heard by the Supreme Court last year, which ruled that Hamdi could not be held without charge and was entitled to a hearing. With no evidence against him, the US government released Hamdi, stripped him of his US citizenship and sent him to his country of origin, Saudi Arabia. If Hamdi is free, John Walker Lindh should be as well.

While the Lindh case has largely been forgotten, a few brave American voices have tried to keep it in the spotlight. Grammy award-winning (and politically progressive) country musician Steve Earle released the track John Walker's Blues, an imagined telling from Lindh's own perspective:

I'm just an American boy raised on MTV
And I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads
But none of 'em looked like me
So I started lookin' around for a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him."
(For the rest of the lyrics click here)

It was a powerful, humanising antidote to the disinformation campaign. Predictably, country music stations banned the song for being unpatriotic.

Tom Junod of Esquire Magazine reconstructed John (now Hamza) Walker Lindh's current life through extensive interviews and concluded: "He is a better person than you or I ... He has a spiritual presence ... He's very kind ... He's very concerned about the poor - so concerned that he's lived among them. He's committed to social justice, though he's the first to admit that he's made some bad decisions in that regard. But that's another thing about him. He never lies. He never changes his story, even when he has every reason to. He's very consistent, to put it mildly."

Frank Lindh's campaign deserves our support. Like the calls to close down Guantanamo, come clean on secret prisons and tell the truth about extraordinary renditions, the call to commute John Lindh's sentence is right and just.

Source :-yvonneridley.org

Further Reading:-

Free John Walker Lindh

Profile: John Walker Lindh

The Real Story of John Walker Lindh
by his father Frank Lindh

Who Will Stand Up For The Tortured And Gagged
by Dave Lindorff