Having met with convicted Taliban supporter John Walker Lindh, a guy from northern Virginia who was convicted of aiding the Islamic State group as a teenager, is now accused of breaking the terms of his parole.
According to court filings, Ali Shukri Amin met with Lindh for around three hours on three different occasions in 2021.
The location of the meetings is not mentioned in the paper.
The encounters are against Amin’s supervised release condition, which prohibits him from meeting with known radicals, according to the prosecution.
The meetings might have also been a breach of Lindh’s supervised release at the time they took place, but Lindh is no longer under supervision because his supervised release term expired last year.
Given that they both had a ban on meeting with extremists, it’s unclear why officials used the meeting as a justification to hold Amin in breach but not Lindh.
However, the court records demonstrate that there was more to the authorities’ worries about Amin than just his interactions with Lindh. Amin, a Dumfries resident, is also charged with maintaining an internet relationship with a British citizen referred to as a “known extremist” until the British government arrests that person in February 2022.
According to the court filing, officials claim Amin advised the teachings of two Islamic preachers deemed extremists by the FBI during his conversations with the British person.
The paper also charges Amin with hiding his online behavior from his parole officer and doing so by utilizing a virtual private network.
According to Michael Jensen, an investigator with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, terrorism defendants are paired with seasoned probation officers who spend a lot of time and effort assisting them in reintegrating into their communities.
It’s also uncommon to request the revocation of supervised release.
He states, “(i)f a probation officer is asking the court to withdraw supervised release, then they have serious doubts that the person is successfully reintegrating into their society and that they don’t cease to be a threat.”
However, the FBI and other organizations are still concerned about Lindh’s actions, ideologies, and ongoing radicalization even after his release from jail in 2019.
According to the court filing outlining Amin’s interactions with Lindh, the FBI believes that Lindh “remains a known extremist and [has] extremist ideations.”
After the September 11 attacks, Lindh was the first American to be charged with a severe terrorism offense.
After being detained in Afghanistan in the weeks following the 9-11 attacks while fighting alongside Taliban troops against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance, he was found guilty of providing services to the Taliban.
As part of a plea agreement, he received a 20-year sentence, and after serving almost 85% of that time, he was released from custody in 2019.
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