John Walker Lindh — known as the “American Taliban” — is scheduled to be a free man on Thursday after serving 17 years in prison. He was still pushing for global jihad as recently as 2017.Experts worry he might still be radicalized. So, what now?The now 38-year-old was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 after a prison uprising that killed CIA officer Johnny Micheal Spann, marking the first fatality of the Afghan war. It was less than three months after 9/11, and Lindh, who grew up in California, became a lightning rod for American anger.Nearly two decades later, it’s believed Lindh might still hold radical beliefs. During his 2002 sentencing, he condemned “terrorism on every level, unequivocally.” But the magazine Foreign Policy in 2017 reported, via leaked government documents, that there were major concerns about Lindh’s beliefs. A 2017 report by the National Counterterrorism Center said he “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts” and a 2017 Federal Bureau of Prisons intelligence assessment said he made statements in support of the Islamic State.In a 2015 letter to a producer at LA news outlet KNBC, Lindh wrote that ISIS did represent Islam and that they were “doing a spectacular job.""The Islamic State is clearly very sincere and serious about fulfilling the long-neglected religious obligation of establishing a caliphate through armed struggle, which is the only correct method,” he wrote at the time, according to KNBC.Under the conditions of his parole, Lindh will be under strict supervision, with these limitations:
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- He won’t be able to go online or own an internet-capable device without permission from a parole officer
- If he ever gets permission to use the internet, his activity will be constantly monitored and he’ll be allowed to communicate in English only.
- He won’t be allowed to travel internationally