Taliban fighter says he’s American

Herald news services

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan — A man claiming to be an American was among more than 80 Taliban fighters who straggled out of a flooded basement days after their prison rebellion was crushed at an Afghan fort.

"U.S. military forces in Afghanistan have in their control a man who calls himself a U.S. citizen," Army Lt. Col. Jim Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said in Washington. "He was among the al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners held by the Northern Alliance in Mazar-e-Sharif."

In an interview on Newsweek magazine’s Web site Sunday night, the man’s parents identified him as John Philip Walker Lindh, 20, of Fairfax, Calif.

Cassella said Walker was injured and was being given medical assistance by U.S. forces. He could not provide further details, nor would he immediately confirm whether the man was indeed a U.S. citizen.

Walker told Newsweek that he had gunshot wounds in both legs.

At Mazar-e-Sharif’s military hospital Sunday, a male nurse confirmed that an American had arrived at the hospital late the previous day as part of a group of 20 wounded fighters.

"Then two American soldiers came and looked over all the prisoners. They spoke to one in English. Then they left the others and took the American away in a car," the nurse said.

Walker told Newsweek he converted to Islam at 16 and since then had studied in Islamic schools in Pakistan. He said that he is now 20 and that he has spent the past six months fighting for the Taliban.

"The Taliban are the only government that actually provides Islamic law," he told Newsweek.

Newsweek said Walker had identified himself as Abdul Hamid.

In the Newsweek interview, Marilyn Walker described her son as "sweet, shy kid" who had gone to Pakistan with an Islamic humanitarian group to help the poor. She said the reports of his capture were the first news she had received of her son’s whereabouts since he left a religious school in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, where he had been studying the Koran, seven months earlier.

Marilyn Walker, a home health care worker, expressed shock that her son had been captured fighting with the Taliban.

"If he got involved in 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."

The mother said Walker’s father was Frank Lindh, a lawyer. Lindh and Marilyn Walker are divorced.

Foreign militants, mostly Arabs and Pakistanis, have fought alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, some of them members of the al-Qaida network of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Northern Alliance soldiers flushed the holdouts from their basement hiding place in the sprawling fort Saturday by flooding it with water, said Dr. Arif Salimi, head of the local health office in the nearby city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

"The soldiers poured water into the basement, and it was very cold so they all came out," Salimi said. "They couldn’t take it any longer."

The men had been hiding since the ferocious battle at Qalai Janghi fortress, outside Mazar-e-Sharif. On Nov. 25, Taliban prisoners rose up against their alliance captors. Alliance fighters backed by U.S. special forces and airstrikes took three days to put down the revolt, killing most of the prisoners.

In his conversation with Newsweek, Walker refused to provide his American name and indicated that although he was born in Washington, D.C., he had spent time elsewhere before winding up in Pakistan. He did not say what led him to convert to Islam and hesitated at first to say whether he supported the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"That requires a pretty long and complicated explanation. I haven’t eaten for two or three days, and my mind is not really in shape to give you a coherent answer," he said. But when pressed, he replied, "Yes, I supported it."

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