Free Republic

CHICAGO (AP) — A 29-year-old Illinois man who idolized American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh has been arrested after attempting to detonate what he thought was a bomb inside a van outside a federal courthouse, officials said Thursday. Michael C. Finton, also known as Talib Islam, was arrested Wednesday and charged in a criminal complaint with one count of attempting to murder federal officers or employees and trying to detonate a weapon of mass destruction. Federal officials said the case has no connections with the major terrorism investigation under way in Colorado and New York. "This alleged plot drives home...

'Jihad Johnny' Linked to Flt. 63 Shoe Bomber America's Tailban traitor "Jihad Johnny" Walker and Flight 63 shoe bomber Richard Reid were recruited to do Osama bin Laden's dirty work by the same extremist Muslim group currently operating all over the globe to build an anti-Western army to fight jihad, one Mideast expert contended Friday. "The French newspaper La Provence reported Tuesday that Reid had been an acolyte of Tabligh-i-Jamaat," reports Islamic scholar Steven Schwartz in the New York Post. "U.S. media disclosed last week that Walker had been recruited by a San Francisco cell of the same group." Schwartz ...

American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh has asked President Bush again to reduce his 20-year prison sentence by an unspecified amount, Lindh's attorney said Tuesday. Lindh, now in his early 20s, wrote a first-person account to the Justice Department's pardon attorneys arguing why he believes Bush should reduce his sentence. Lindh's attorney said the document could not be publicly released under U.S. government restrictions intended to prevent Lindh from disclosing national secrets. Lindh, a native of Marin County, Calif., who is now imprisoned in southern California, was captured in Afghanistan weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He pleaded...

Last week, John Walker Lindh  petitioned the president to commute his 20-year sentence for fighting with the Taliban, imposed in 2002.  It’s a shame that this pampered child of Marin County is sitting in a cell for something as trivial as treason. Under a plea bargain, Walker Lindh (AKA: Abdul Hamid, AKA: Sulayman Al-Lindh) pleaded guilty to supplying services to the Taliban regime and carrying explosives for  Afghanistan’s former rulers.Which is like to saying that Benedict Arnold supplied services to George III. Johnny Jihad trained in an al-Qaeda camp – where he learned to fire an AK-47 and rubbed elbows...

Lawyers for John Walker Lindh, the American who fought with the Taliban, claim he was systematically brutalised and threatened with 'torture and death' after US troops seized him. The claims come as his lawyers prepare to argue that he was a soldier of the Taliban, not an anti-US terrorist. At the centre of his defence will be his claim that the witness statement he provided to his FBI interrogators was given under duress and in the hope of ending his mistreatment. Lindh is being tried in an ordinary court and will not face the death penalty, unlike foreign prisoners, who...