Father: ‘American Taliban’ should get clemency

In the spring of 2001, John Walker Lindh told his parents he was going to dodge the desert heat and spend the summer in the mountains of Pakistan. He did not tell his parents that he planned to cross into Afghanistan and join the Taliban army.

The younger Lindh saw bin Laden speak twice while he was training in Afghanistan but had no idea that he was involved in terrorism against the U.S., his father said.

On Thursday, Frank Lindh emphasized that John Walker Lindh was involved in an Afghan war, not a fight against the U.S., when the Muslim convert joined the Taliban army to fight the Northern Alliance. He noted that the U.S. once supported Taliban fighters when they were fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

“What happened unfortunately for John is that the United States made an abrupt change after the 9/11 attacks,” Frank Lindh said. “We switched sides. John was on the ground there when that happened. He certainly didn’t go to Afghanistan to do anything against America. He never fought against America. He never fired a gun at an American. He was simply rescued.”

Or he thought he had been rescued, his father said, until he was taken into custody, duct taped naked on a stretcher and held in a metal shipping container for two days.

Frank Lindh said he would have urged his son not to get involved in the fighting had he known of his plans.

“If he had asked, I would have told him, ‘John, we don’t have a stake in that fight,”’ said Frank Lindh. “I would have told him that if he wants to help, he should go work in a refugee camp.”

‘I feel very proud of my son’
Even so, Frank Lindh said his son did no wrong.

“I feel very proud of my son. He acted with great integrity throughout this entire ordeal. He’s a great kid. He has more integrity and more dignity than any politician or any journalist that I’ve ever met,” he said.

As passionately as Frank Lindh is advocating for his son’s clemency, there is another father fighting just as hard to extend John Walker Lindh’s sentence by getting him convicted of murder or treason.

Johnny Spann is the father of CIA officer Johnny Micheal “Mike” Spann, who was killed in a prison riot after being videotaped speaking with John Walker Lindh.

Johnny Spann is conducting his own investigation into the origins of the riot at the Mazar-e-Sharif prison, where suspected Taliban supporters were held. Spann contends that the uprising began with a planned grenade attack inside the prison building rather than a spontaneous scuffle outside where his son was interviewing prisoners, including Lindh.

Frank Lindh, a San Rafael, Calif. attorney for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., said he and Lindh’s mother, Marilyn Walker, an office manager who lives in San Anselmo, visit their son for long weekends each month at the medium security federal penitentiary in Victorville, Calif.

“The silver lining in this whole cloud is that we have wonderful visits with our son,” said Frank Lindh. “Ordinarily a son who is 25 doesn’t have much time to spend with his father. But we have a lot of time.”

MORE FROM SECURITY

Security Section Front

Rural Ill. prison to house Gitmo detainees Report: Islamic terror rising as al-Qaida fades AP source: Feds eye NY trial for Gitmo suspect Feds have mixed record in terror probes Americans held in Pakistan straddled 2 worlds Source: Senior al-Qaida leader killed by drone CIA ends secret Blackwater missile contract Security Section Front   Add Security headlines to your news reader: