Jonathon Gatehouse · CBC News
A police file photo made available in 2002 of the 'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh, and a photo of him from the
records of the Arabia Hassani Kalan Surani Bannu madrassa religious school in Pakistan's northwestern city of Bannu.
Lindh is an American captured with the Taliban in November 2001, weeks after the U.S. launched the war in Afghanistan.
(Tariq Mahmood/AFP/Getty Images)
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Forever prisoners
The U.S. "war on terror" continues, but its first American target is now a free man.
John Walker Lindh, a Muslim convert from California who travelled to Afghanistan as a teenager to join the Taliban, was released from an Indiana prison this morning.
The now 38-year-old pleaded guilty in 2002 to aiding the group and carrying weapons. He served 17 years of his 20-year sentence, and will now spend the next three years on parole after his good behaviour qualified him for early release.
U.S. born John Walker Lindh is led away by a Northern Alliance soldier near Fort Qali-i-Janghi prison on Dec. 1, 2001.
Lindh, a 21-year-old Californian, converted to Islam as a teenager. (Reuters)
Lindh has always maintained that he didn't support terrorism and never fought against his fellow Americans. But all that time in jail doesn't seem to have changed his radical views, and based on his recent letters he now appears to have sympathy for the Islamic State.
Many are outraged at Lindh's release.
Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, called it "unexplainable and unconscionable" during an appearance on Fox News this morning, saying that Lindh is still "threatening the United States of America, still committed to the very jihad that he engaged in."
60 to be released in next 5 years
But convicted terrorists gaining their liberty is something Americans are going to have to get used to. U.S. jails currently hold more than 450 prisoners who have been convicted of terrorism-related offences since the 9/11 attacks. And at least 60 of those convicts are scheduled to be released between now and 2024.
A report published last fall, titled When Terrorists Come Home, noted that most of these convicts will still have long lives ahead of them when they re-enter society, having been on average just 27 when sentenced.
Some will likely return to their ways — intelligence officials have reported that 17 per cent of prisoners released from Cuba's Guantanamo Bay are suspected or known to have rejoined terror organizations.
People walk past a guard tower outside the fencing of Camp 5 at the U.S. Military's Prison in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, in January 2017. (Thomas Watkins/AFP/Getty Images)
No plan to deradicalize
Still, the United States has made almost no efforts to "deradicalize" its homegrown jihadists, having failed to create any sort of rehabilitation or re-entry program. And the problem of what to do with them will stretch on for years, with dozens of Americans still facing trial for allegedly trying to join or help the Islamic State.
Then there are the prisoners who remain in legal limbo. As of last December, 40 men remain incarcerated at the U.S. military detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. Many have been there for 15 years or more.
Only one of them — Ali Hamza al Bahul, a Yemeni man who served as Osama bin Laden's media secretary in Afghanistan — has been convicted of a crime. Eight are still before tribunals, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed and five others who face the death penalty for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
Five men have been cleared for release, but have yet to return to their homelands. Their prospects are growing dimmer since Donald Trump took office and vowed to keep the jail open, and add more prisoners who have links to terrorism.
The vast majority of Gitmo detainees — 26 men hailing from 11 different nations — are now classified as "forever prisoners", destined to be held indefinitely without charge or trial.
The oldest among them, a Pakistani businessman named Saifullah Parachu, is now 71, having been held for 15 years on suspicion of aiding al-Qaeda. (His eldest son, Uzair, is serving a 30-year sentence in a New York jail for providing material support for terrorism.)
With orders now in place to keep Guantanamo open through 2043, authorities have been trying to prepare for the long haul.
Last last month, Rear Adm. John C. Ring, the then commander of the camp, told visiting reporters about plans to make cells wheelchair-accessible, add specialized medical care like dialysis, and build an $88.5 million US hospice centre.
"Unless America's policy changes, at some point we'll be doing some sort of end-of-life care here," he explained.
He was relieved of his duties the day after the reports appeared, just seven weeks before he was scheduled to be rotated out of the job. No reason was given.
The solution
This is a huge problem, not just for America but also for Europe where terrorists who directly attacked, or facilitated attacks, on Europe are beginning to come up for release. What to do?
The answer is horrendous but simple. Radicalized Muslims must be declared mentally ill, just as Syrian psychiatrist Dr. Wafa Sultan has said:
“I came to the absolute conviction that it is impossible…impossible…for
any human being to read the biography of Mohammed and believe in it,
and then emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person.”
Radicalized Muslims must be declared mentally ill and a danger to a healthy society, and therefore, should be locked away until such time as they renounce Islam completely, or until they die.
They must be segregated from non-radicalized prisoners completely. And programs to deradicalize them must be developed and applied.
It is madness to let these people go free into society again!
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