"American Taliban" Seeks Reduced Sentence
Lawyers for John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, have called for a third time for the Bush Administration to reduce his 20-year prison sentence.
Lindh pleaded guilty in 2002 to providing material support to the Taliban, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. He was captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan and turned over to the American military in 2001.
Morrison and Foerster partner James Brosnahan said the nine-month sentence a U.S. military tribunal handed down Friday to Australian David Hicks, a confessed al Qaeda trainee, made Lindh’s sentence disproportionate to the crime.
But a Department of Defense spokesman noted that “Hicks was never implicated in anyone’s death,” while prosecutors believed that Lindh may have played a role in the killing of CIA agent Johnny “Mike” Spann. Spann interviewed Lindh just before he was killed in a prison uprising in Afghanistan, and Spann’s father spoke at Lindh’s sentencing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA. Lindh could have warned Spann the uprising was about to take place, he claimed.
