#4 Johnny Boy currently resides at Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute where he will be until at least 2019.
Pops would like him out though. 9/25/08
SAN FRANCISCO - The father of John Walker Lindh, the San Anselmo man who has spent almost seven years in federal prison for serving in an Afghan army, told law students at the University of San Francisco his son has been used as a scapegoat.
Frank Lindh of San Rafael, who renewed his call for a presidential pardon, spoke Wednesday for the fourth year about how he believes U.S. troops in northern Afghanistan in 2001 illegitimately captured his son, known as an "American Taliban," for fighting as a Taliban soldier after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Frank Lindh said he believes his son went to Afghanistan in July 2001 in a misguided effort to help the Taliban establish the country - and did not have anything to do with plans to attack the U.S.
John Walker Lindh, 27, had studied Islam, Arabic and the Quran in Yemen and Pakistan since he was 16 to become a scholar, identified with the religion and thought it was his duty to fight for the Taliban, his father said. After a battle between the Taliban and northern warlords, U.S. forces took John Walker Lindh into custody in December, "tied him up, naked, bound and kept him in a shipping container," his father said.
A federal grand jury in February 2002 indicted him on charges including conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens, and he pleaded guilty to providing services to the Taliban as a foot soldier and carrying a rifle and two grenades. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
During the sentencing he said he had no intention of fighting against the U.S. and would not have joined the Taliban knowing what he knows now. His family continues to boost a petition urging President Bush to pardon him."He's not a criminal by any stretch of the imagination," his father said.
Once again illustrating the point that dead men tell no tales... |