A 20-year-old white US citizen who joined the Taliban was transferred to the custody of US Special Forces in Afghanistan after he was taken prisoner by the opposition Northern Alliance, Newsweek magazine reported on Saturday.
Abdul Hamid, born John Walker according to a news channel , was among those who surrendered to alliance fighters after a prison uprising near the northern city of Mazar-I-Sharif.
Hamid was among the 80 prisoners undergoing treatment at a Turkish-Afghan hospital but was taken into custody by four US troops almost immediately after arriving at the hospital in Sherbagan, about 105 kilometers west of Mazar, the magazine said.
Two of the US operatives were thought to be CIA agents according to hospital staffer doctor Abdul Wadoot – among them Johnny Spann, who died in the riot.
The magazine identified him as Abdul Hamid, age 20, and described him as Well-spoken, with a mid-Atlantic accent.
Hamid declined to give the magazine his birth name or any other details about his life, but did reveal that he was born in the Washington area and said he grew up in a different, unspecified locale in the United States.

Hamid told the magazine that he converted to Islam at age 16, and later went to Pakistan to study the Koran, where he came in contact with some of the original teachers of the leaders of the Taliban movement.
Bureau Report