Former US Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh was expected to be sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday under the terms of a plea agreement struck in July.
The 21-year-old Californian pleaded guilty to carrying
explosives and aiding the Taliban regime. He was caught by US special forces after an Afghanistan prison uprising late last year.
Under the plea bargain, Lindh agreed to provide the US
government with information to aide its campaign against Islamic terrorism that started after both defence and prosecution lawyers testified Lindh had cooperated with interrogators.
Prosecutors never charged Lindh with treason, and they dropped charges claiming he aided the al-Qaida network or conspired to murder Americans, which could have led to the death penalty.
The Cable News Network (CNN) reported on Thursday that Lindh had told interrogators he believed al-Qaida had planned two more waves of attacks against the United States, in late 2001 and early 2002.
Citing ”secret documents” from the FBI and military, CNN reported that Lindh believed that up to 50 al-Qaida operatives had been sent on missions against the United States and Israel.
According to the report, Lindh overheard al-Qaida trainers talking about a second attack that ”would involve attacking nuclear facilities, oil/gas pipe lines or some kind of biological attack”.
CNN said that Lindh had said he first became interested in Islam when he saw the 1992 film ”Malcolm X” at age 12, converting to Islam as a teenager and later studying Arabic in Yemen.
He travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan and joined a seven-week training course at an Afghan al-Qaida camp last summer, where he learned to use weapons and explosives and once met bin Laden.
Lindh reportedly said he declined bin Laden’s request to join missions against the United States and Israel and instead said he wanted to fight on the Afghanistan frontline.
He was captured last November, as US-Northern Alliance forces were routing Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, in a Taliban prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif that left CIA operative Mike Spann dead. – Sapa-DPA