Death not sought for U.S. Taliban

FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

John Walker Lindh, the 20-year-old Californian who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, was charged Tuesday with conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens. He will be tried in a civilian court and could face life in prison.

After weeks of deliberations, the Bush administration opted against a military trial or charges that would carry the death penalty.

Lindh, who converted to Islam at 16 and is alleged to have trained at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan, was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. He will be transferred from a U.S. military ship for trial in the United States.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said Lindh admitted in interviews with the FBI that he met Osama bin Laden and knew bin Laden had ordered the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

“He chose to embrace fanatics, and his allegiance to those terrorists never faltered,” said Ashcroft. “Terrorists did not compel John Walker Lindh to join them. John Walker Lindh chose terrorists.”

MSU criminal justice Professor David Carter said despite Lindh’s actions, he may not have known he was fighting against U.S. forces, though.

“It would be easy not to know who you’re fighting against,” he said. “You have to look at this objectively. When you’re out in the boondocks of Afghanistan, you don’t always know what’s going on.”

Lindh learned in early June that bin Laden had sent people to the United States to carry out suicide operations, according to an FBI affidavit. The document described an odyssey that began with Lindh’s conversion to Islam in 1997, later training in Pakistan and Afghanistan and a decision last year to join the Taliban.

Lindh was interviewed by the FBI on Dec. 9 and 10 and waived his rights to a lawyer, the affidavit said. He had joined the military training camp in May, it said, and was told by al-Qaida people to pretend that he was Irish and not to admit to anyone that he was American.

Friends have described Lindh as an intelligent young man who wore full-length robes to high school and went by the name “Suleyman” following his conversion to Islam. After his capture in December, his parents, Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh, had asked the public to withhold judgment about their son.

Carter agrees.

“I think we have to be careful about drawing conclusions until the case goes to trial,” Carter said. “We have to prove the facts beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law, and that will be a hard thing to do without witnesses.

“This is by no means a cake walk. It’s going to be a difficult case for the government to prove.”

James Brosnahan, a lawyer for the separated couple, could not be reached Tuesday. A spokeswoman at his law office in San Francisco said he was “issuing no statements at this time.”

“We may never know why he turned his back on our country and our values, but we cannot ignore that he did,” Ashcroft said. “Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against your country.”

While Lindh was charged with conspiring to kill Americans, it’s not clear from the FBI affidavit whether he actually engaged in combat against American forces. He was deployed to the front lines to fight against opposition Northern Alliance forces, but after Sept. 11 his position was bombed by U.S. airstrikes and he retreated, surrendered and was taken into custody, the affidavit said.

“I think if he’s fighting for the Taliban, he should probably be treated like everyone else who fights in the Taliban,” psychology sophomore Lisa Evans said.