According to the sourcelink, 38 year old John Walker Lindh (remember him?) is set to be released from prison THIS MAY after spending the past 17 years behind bars. He continues to support the Taliban, continues to advocate for “global jihad,” continues to write and translate super violent and extremist crap, and just a few years ago told a news producer that he plans to continue to spread violent extremist Islam as soon as he’s free.
This is the same guy who was captured by US forces a couple of months after 9/11.
During the time he’s been in prison, he busied himself filing two different lawsuits against the Bureau of Prisons so that he could continue practicing his twisted religion; specifically, he first won the right to have communal prayer, and shortly after he argued about wearing his pants above the ankle.
He’s a high school dropout who went to the Middle East in 1998, and WITH THE SUPPORT OF HIS PARENTS went to freaking YEMEM to learn Arabic. He then traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and finally ended up meeting Osama bin Laden, who apparently thanked him for his good work, according to testimony he gave FBI investigators.
The only good news, if there is any, is that he has become an Irish citizen and plans to move there after he’s released, telling the Irish government when he applied that his circumstances are “unique” and that it’d be untenable for him to stay in the US. And Ireland has already indicated that he’ll be allowed in.
Good luck with that, Ireland.
So what do we do in these situations? He will have served out his sentence. He can’t be re-convicted simply because he continues to be evil, unless he commits further evil acts. But that we KNOW he intends to do just that is massively disconcerting, isn’t it?
I don’t know the answer. I just know that it seems completely insane that this guy is just going to walk free.
In my view, if you’re convicted of terrorism – the ultimate betrayal of your country, you get a life sentence and you go to Gitmo forever. The End.
Thoughts?