Taliban fighter is US citizen
A Taliban fighter who survived the bloody prison uprising near Mazar-i-Sharif last week has been revealed as an American citizen and has been taken into custody by US special forces.
John Walker, 20, who also calls himself Abdul Hamid, was taken into custody at a hospital where he had been taken for treatment of minor gunshot and shrapnel wounds. He had been imprisoned by the Northern Alliance in Mazar-i-Sharif along with other al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
John Walker said he had traveled across the border to Afghanistan to help the Taliban build a "pure Islamic state." He said he had gone to the Afghan capital, Kabul, and volunteered to serve the Taliban.
Because he did not know the local languages, he said, the Taliban told him to contact forces supporting Osama bin Laden.
He then received combat training at a camp in Northern Afghanistan, fought with Pakistani allies of the Taliban in the disputed region of Kashmir and then returned to fight recently with the Taliban at Kunduz, Afghanistan.
John Walker, described by US officials as "a white, educated-sounding, apparently middle-class American" was born in Washington in February 1981. He is the second of three children of a home health care worker and a lawyer, Frank Lindh. His mother said he spent the first 10 years of his life in the Washington suburbs of Maryland, moving to Northern California in 1991.
John's mother, Marilyn, said she had lost touch with her son since he left a religious school in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, where he had been studying the Koran, seven months earlier.
John's father, Frank Lindh, who is divorced from Marilyn Walker, said that his son took to Islam naturally. "I support him and his studies," Lindh said. "He's learned Arabic and is memorizing the Koran. He's a very good scholar."
Marilyn Walker said she was shocked by her son's statements of support for the Taliban and bin Laden. "If he got involved with the Taliban, he must have been brainwashed," she said. "He was isolated. He didn't know a soul in Pakistan. When you're young and impressionable, it's easy to be led by charismatic people."
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