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OPINION: A Fair Deal on Lindh
Thursday, July 18, 2002
Palm Beach Post Editorial

Many people, egged on by Mr. Ashcroft's rhetoric, called for Lindh to be executed or imprisoned for life. But the government could not make a case for treason or show that Lindh was involved in CIA officer Johnny Spann's death.

John Walker Lindh's guilty plea and probable 20-year sentence show that federal courts can handle defendants who are accused of attacking America or Americans.

The Bush administration has not given recently apprehended suspects access to federal courts. Yasser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla are held in military custody as "enemy combatants." Hamdi, like Lindh, is a U.S. citizen captured while fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Unlike Lindh, his parents are not citizens, and he spent most of his life in Saudi Arabia. Padilla, also an American, is a former gang member who allegedly plotted to build a dirty radioactive bomb.

The administration's policy is inconsistent. Zacarias Moussaoui, the French national charged with terrorism for allegedly conspiring to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks, gets the federal trial denied to Americans Hamdi and Padilla. So does Richard Reid, the British citizen charged with trying to set off a shoe bomb.
(More: The Palm Beach Post News Source)
2002 © The Palm Beach Post.

Dan