Lindh Asks Bush to Reduce 20-Year Sentence

Apr 05, 12:59 PM

Current Headlines: By John Riley, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Apr. 5--Lawyers for John Walker Lindh, the Californian serving 20 years in federal prison for aiding the Taliban, said yesterday they were requesting a sentence commutation in the wake of a deal last week allowing the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to plead guilty before a military commission and be released in nine months.

David Hicks, an Australian who has been held at Guantanamo for five years, admitted training with al-Qaida and providing material support to a terrorist organization as part of his plea bargain. Prosecutors dropped all terrorism charges against Lindh as part of a plea bargain in 2002.

"It is a question of proportionality, it is a question of fairness," said Lindh's lawyer, James Brosnahan, at a news conference in San Francisco attended by the parents of the so-called "American Taliban."

Lindh, 26, went to Afghanistan before Sept. 11 as a result of his conversion to Islam, and became a soldier in the Taliban's civil war with the Northern Alliance in 2001. After his capture, he was imprisoned near Mazar-i-Sharif and was caught up in a riot that led to the death of CIA agent Johnny Spann, but there was no evidence linking him to Spann's death.

The petition for commutation filed yesterday with President George W. Bush and the Justice Department marks the third time Lindh has sought a reduced sentence. Brosnahan said he has not received a response to previous requests.

Lindh had been imprisoned in California near his family, but in December was moved to the federal "super-max" facility in Florence, Colo. He is prohibited from communicating with the outside world, but his lawyer and parents said he had been a "model prisoner," devoting himself to Islamic study, and said they didn't know the reasons for the transfer.

"John has been in prison for more than five years and it is time for John to come home," said his mother, Marilyn Walker.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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