WASHINGTON?John Walker Lindh, the 20-year-old Californian who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, will be charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and could face life in prison if convicted, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday.
Lindh, who converted to Islam at 16 and is alleged to have trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, will be charged in a U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., rather than a military tribunal. 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,” Ashcroft said. “Terrorists did not compel John Walker Lindh to join them. John Walker Lindh chose terrorists.”
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.
Friends have described Lindh as an intelligent young man who wore full-length robes to high school and went by the name “Suleyman” after 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.
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,” said Ashcroft. “Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against your country.”
Lindh also is being charged with providing support to terrorist organizations and engaging in prohibited transactions with the Taliban, Ashcroft said.
The Bush administration had considered whether to charge Lindh in a civilian or military court and whether to charge him with treason, which carries the death penalty.
Ashcroft suggested that proving Lindh committed treason would be difficult, but he left open the possibility that other charges could be filed as evidence is developed.
“The Constitution imposes a high evidentiary burden to prove the charge of treason”?a confession in open court or testimony by two witnesses, said Ashcroft.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush “is supportive of the process put in place. He is confident that the process will end in justice.”
The charges were recommended to Bush by the National Security Council, which mediated advice from the Justice Department, the Pentagon and the State Department.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he supported the “difficult and complex” decision to place the case in the civilian criminal justice system.
Lindh was captured in November fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was taken into custody by U.S. forces after a prison uprising at a fortress in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
CIA agent John Spann, who had questioned Lindh, was killed in the uprising. There has been no indication that Lindh was involved in Spann’s death.
The federal affidavit said that after Spann interviewed him, Lindh was moved to a lawn and tried to run when he heard gunfire. He was shot in the leg.