"Who is John Walker Lindh?
"Born in Washington DC in 1981 and named after John Lennon, Lindh was raised a Catholic.
"He dropped out of school and converted to Islam at the age of 16, moving to Yemen the next year to learn Arabic.
"In 2000, he went to study in Pakistan and eventually travelled to Afghanistan in May 2001 to join the Taliban
"US forces captured and arrested Lindh shortly after the invasion of the country in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
"'Had I realised then what I know now about the Taliban, I would never have joined them,' Lindh said during his sentencing in 2002, on a charge of aiding the Islamist militant group.
"Is Lindh still an extremist?
"There are concerns that Lindh has not abandoned his extremism.
"
Foreign Policy magazine published US government documents in 2017 stating that the prisoner 'continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts'.
"And in March last year, Lindh 'told a television news producer that he would continue to spread violent extremist Islam upon his release', the documents allege.
"More recently, The Atlantic magazine's journalist
Graeme Wood wrote letters to Lindh while he was behind bars and describes him as 'unrepentant'.
"'His more than 17 years in captivity seem, on the basis of this correspondence, to have converted Lindh from an al-Qaeda supporter to an Islamic State supporter,' Mr Wood wrote."
Anger as 'American Taliban' released
