Name at birth: John Philip Walker Lindh

Raised in suburban Washington, D. C. and central California, John Walker was captured in Afghanistan in November of 2001, calling himself Abdul Hamid and fighting on the side of the Taliban against U.S. forces. Walker's own story was that he had been studying the Arabic language and the Koran in Yemen and Pakistan, and that in May of 2001 he made his way to Afghanistan and fell in with Osama Bin Laden's al-Queda terrorist network. Walker's parents, Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker, say their son, strongly influenced by The Autobiography of Malcolm X, dropped out of school as a teen and converted to Islam, adopted the name Suleyman al-Faris and eventually moved to the Middle East to study language and religion. In January of 2002 Walker was returned to the U.S. and charged with conspiring to kill U.S. citizens abroad (specifically, U.S. soldiers).

John Walker is named for the former Beatle John Lennon... Walker is the son of Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker, who kept her maiden name after their marriage.