From PEOPLE Magazine
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Nothing, that is, except the way he views his child. Even now, his parents maintain that John, 21, is a sweet-natured young man who simply made some questionable decisions. As Frank, a lawyer for Pacific Gas and Electric, and wife Marilyn Walker, 51, a health-care aide, see it, their son is guilty of nothing worse than going on a spiritual journey that went awry. "I wouldn't do anything differently," says Frank, in an interview with PEOPLE, the first the family has granted. "I think we raised John well, and we're proud of him and love him."
The U.S. government and a considerable number of ordinary citizens take a dimmer view. After being charged last February with numerous counts, including terrorism, for his actions in Afghanistan, Lindh accepted a plea bargain in July. In return for pleading guilty to the less serious charges of supporting the Taliban and carrying explosives, he agreed to a likely sentence of 20 years in a federal prison, which is scheduled to be imposed at a hearing in Virginia on Oct. 4. While that may close the legal proceedings against him, the Lindh case is in many ways a family saga at its heart, with a number of open questions. His parents, by speaking out on the eve of his sentencing, hope to correct what they believe are some of the misconceptions about the infamous "American Taliban."
No one doubts that the Lindhs were devoted parents. When John was born in 1981, the family was living in Silver Spring, Md. There was already an older son, Connell, now 24, a buyer at a record store near San Francisco, with another child, Naomi, 13, to follow. At the time, Frank, a government policy analyst, had applied to law school at Georgetown University. Marilyn, who had been an aide in a home for the disabled, gave up work to be with the kids.
Through much of elementary school in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Silver Spring, John was enrolled in programs for gifted students. "Music and math and languages are so easy for him," says Marilyn. Religion was an important but not central component of the family's life. Frank was and remains a practicing Roman Catholic who took his kids to church regularly. Though raised Catholic, Marilyn had drifted away from the church, and her real fascination was with Native American religions. "I [became] very interested in their spirituality," she says.
By 1991 Frank had transferred to his law firm's office in San Francisco, and the family moved north of the city to Marin County. The real turning point for John came at age 12, when he saw the Spike Lee movie Malcolm X, a biopic of the Black Muslim leader. What enthralled him was the final scene of the movie, which showed thousands of Muslims making their pilgrimage to Mecca to pray at the Great Mosque. "When he talks about that last scene, his face still lights up," says Tony West, one of Lindh's lawyers. "He says that seeing all those people in humbleness and equality all praying together really inspired him."
Lindh began immersing himself in the world of Islam. He read books on the subject as well as the Koran itself in English. By the time he was 14 he considered himself a Muslim. He adopted the name Suleyman (a variation of Solomon) al Faris and at 16 had his formal induction ceremony into Islam. When he'd go to his mosque, the small Islamic Center of Mill Valley, he would wear a white robe and kufi. Though his parents insisted that he not wear his Islamic attire at school, they had no problem with his religious commitment. "We always accepted [his] interest in and conversion to Islam," says Frank.
From the start, Lindh exhibited the zeal of a convert. "He was more enthusiastic about Islam than the believers who are born into it," says Abdullah Nana, 23, whose father is the leader of the Mill Valley Islamic Center. Lindh attended an alternative high school in Larkspur, Calif. After he passed the state proficiency exam, his goal became learning Arabic, which would enable him to read the Koran in the original text. He focused on Yemen, a rustic, tribal nation on the Red Sea, where a classical form of Arabic is spoken.
Although many parents might have reservations about letting a 17-year-old travel by himself to study in Yemen, Frank and Marilyn agreed to John's plan. "If you were going to study French," says Frank, "you'd go to France." But as Prof. Kahaled Abou el Fadl, who teaches Islamic law at UCLA, points out, Yemen is rife with fundamentalist fervor, which could have an effect on an impressionable mind. Says Prof, el Fadl: "If my own son [were Lindh's age and] came to me and asked to go to Yemen to study, I would say no." Marilyn says that she did check up on the country and heard nothing especially worrisome, though there were widespread reports of kidnappings. In retrospect she regrets giving her okay. "Now, knowing what I know," she says, "I wouldn't let him go."
When he returned home in 1999, John told his family he wished to live austerely and practice celibacy. His parents were accepting. "There are many priests in my family," explains Frank. "They were always in robes, only black. So this seemed familiar to me." In any case, John's family had undergone a major change of its own while he had been away. Frank and Marilyn had legally separated. (Frank now lives in San Rafael, Calif., while Marilyn resides in nearby Fairfax; they share custody of Naomi.) The couple won't discuss the problems in their marriage except to insist that they didn't have an unduly negative effect on John. "There is no connection between his conversion to Islam and our split," says Marilyn. "Some people are seekers, and he is one of them. I know that sounds New Age, and some people won't get it. But he wasn't doing this out of a void. He wanted this kind of life out of a pure motive."
His headlong rush into Islam accelerated in the months that followed. John headed back to Yemen in February 2000 but stayed only a short time. He wound up in Pakistan in the company of a young man named Khizar Hiyat, a member of a fundamentalist group, Tablighi Jamaat, whom he had met at the Mill Valley mosque. Hiyat encouraged Lindh to enroll at a madrassah, a fundamentalist school, in the town of Bannu in northern Pakistan. Conditions at the school were spartan. Lindh studied 12 hours a day at the three-room academy, though the town did boast a cybercafe, where he was able to send regular e-mails to his family. After a few months there, however, he sent a message saying that he was going to the mountains and might be out of touch for a while. It would be eight months.
What he didn't tell them was that he had decided to become a holy warrior for the Taliban, who then controlled Afghanistan despite a long-running struggle against the Northern Alliance. His parents and lawyers maintain that in doing so Lindh was simply trying to be true to his new faith. "John was told that Muslim women and children were being raped and killed by the Northern Alliance," says his attorney James Brosnahan. "He felt it was his duty to take up arms in their defense." In June 2001, his family says, he arrived at a Taliban camp in Afghanistan, where he and a few other recruits at one point met Osama bin Laden. He later told his lawyers he had been unimpressed with the terrorist leader, and they contend that Lindh had no further dealings with Al Qaeda. But in its original February indictment the U.S. government declared that the camp was in fact an Al Qaeda base, where Lindh underwent a seven-week course in terror. In any event, his family had become increasingly worried about him, so much so that Frank began visiting mosques near home, asking if anyone there knew his son and had heard from him.
Brosnahan says Lindh was asked by Taliban superiors if he wanted to carry out missions in other countries but that he refused. After the terror attacks on Sept. 11, his mother and father became frantic. "No one knew what might happen," says Marilyn, who still assumed that I John was off studying somewhere in Pakistan. "Would someone think he was a spy I and hurt him?" According to the Lindh camp, John had no opportunity to flee Afghanistan after Sept. 11. Instead, he wound up in the Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif, where he was taken prisoner by U.S. allies in late November. But others believe he could—and should—have raised a white flag and walked earlier. While imprisoned with other Taliban captives, he was questioned by CIA agent Johnny "Mike" Spann on Nov. 25, but he refused to answer any questions. During a prison uprising a few hours later, Spann was killed and Lindh wounded. There is no evidence that Lindh played a role in the revolt, but that is little consolation for the Spann family. "He was fighting for the Taliban," says Johnny Spann, Mike Spann's father. "He had a chance to tell Mike 'I'm an American. I have information that will save Americans' lives.' He didn't do it."
Lindh was held incommunicado and interrogated for months before being brought back to the United States. Officials say he has been cooperative but appears to know little of any consequence. As it stands now, Lindh will have to serve at least 17 years of his sentence before he is eligible for release. His family has visited him several times at his Virginia jail, and they write regularly. His brother Connell says John has recently been reading a novel by Saul Bellow. "We're always talking about books," says Connell. Lindh continues to be an observant Muslim, and his family continues to accept that, and him, unconditionally. "We really miss him, but we're here for him," says Marilyn, "and always will be."
Bill Hewitt
Maureen Harrington in Marin County and Colleen O'Connor in Washington, D.C.
- Contributors:
- Maureen Harrington,
- Colleen O'Connor.
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