That’s the picture. But the soundtrack is not so clear. If you listen to federal prosecutors, Lindh, 20, is a “committed terrorist, who not only talked the talk, but walked the walk.” Armed with a 10-count indictment returned by a grand jury on Tuesday, prosecutors today convinced a federal magistrate in Virginia that Lindh poses a danger to society and should be denied bail. Lindh will now be kept in jail until he is tried later this year on federal charges that he conspired to murder Americans abroad and provided aid to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
U.S. Magistrate Curtis Sewell was unswayed by the arguments of Lindh’s lawyers, who described Lindh as a clean-living young man, who “doesn’t drink and doesn’t take drugs and … follows the teachings of the church he adopted.” And the magistrate seemed incredulous at the defense team’s assertion that Lindh would not flee if released into the custody of his divorced parents, who promised to support him financially and monitor his whereabouts. Noting that Lindh’s parents had not seen their son for nearly two years and had lost contact with him altogether during his six months with the Taliban, Sewell scoffed at the defense’s claim that Lindh was a “loyal American.”
Prosecutors cited Lindh’s own correspondence to his parents, sent while he was overseas, as proof that he would flee the United States given a chance. In an e-mail to his mother, sent from Yemen in February 2000, Lindh asks her to move to England, writing “I really don’t know what your big atttachement [sic] to America is all about. What has American ever done for anybody?” In another, rejecting his parents’ request that he come home for a visit, he wrote: “I don’t really want to see America again….”
In an e-mail sent to family members on June 24, 2000, he writes that the United States incited the Persian Gulf War and that Saddam Hussein was “heavily encouraged” by an American official to invade Kuwait.
Earlier e-mails and letters from Lindh also mention his feelings about the United States. In a September 1998 letter, he wrote that the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania “seem far more likely to have been carried out by the American government than by any Muslims.” A month later, he wrote to his mother, “Although I’m not particularly fond of the idea of returning to America, I do have a four-month vacation in about six months.”
As the magistrate ordered that Lindh be held in jail, noting that he had “every incentive to flee,” Lindh’s mother, sitting in the second row of the courtroom, shook her head slowly from side to side. After the hearing, Lindh’s parents emerged stone-faced and left without speaking to the mob of reporters on the courthouse steps. That task was left to attorney Jim Brosnahan, who accused the Bush administration of turning their frustration over their inability to capture Osama bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda operatives against Lindh. Brosnahan said the government’s frustration was “understandable”, but that nothing could be gained by “taking it out” on Lindh. “They have brought out the cannon to shoot the mouse.”
The outcome of the detention hearing was hardly a surprise: the defense team knew their chances of getting Lindh released before trial on such serious charges were virtually nonexistent. But the first substantive courtroom skirmish between Lindh’s defense team and government prosecutors gave both sides a chance to size up their chances at trial–and, perhaps, to subtly open the back channels for a plea bargain. There are incentives for both sides. The prosecution’s case rests on self-incriminating statements Lindh gave to FBI agents after his capture. There are no other known witnesses who can describe what John Walker Lindh did in Afghanistan, as opposed to what he says he did. Lindh’s lawyers claim that his statements, in which he acknowledges receiving military training from Al Qaeda and meeting Osama bin Laden, were coerced. His lawyers say Lindh spoke to the FBI only after spending days in a metal shipping container, his naked body strapped shackled and bound with duct tape to a stretcher. The defense will make every effort to keep a jury from ever hearing those statements. But if today’s hearing is any guide, the court is likely to be anything but friendly to the Lindh team. In the meantime, John Walker Lindh will be seeing America through the bars of his prison cell. And he probably won’t be sending any e-mail.
