John Walker Lindh's Family Seeks Reduced Prison Sentence for Son

April 4, 2007 — -- Two young, Western men captured on the wrong side of an Afghanistan battlefield in December 2001.

Two plea bargains.

Two vastly disparate sentences.

That was the message Wednesday from the parents of John Walker Lindh and his attorneys, who held a press conference in San Francisco to ask President Bush to reduce or commute Lindh's 20-year sentence.

The plea for compassion came in the wake of a nine-month sentence meted out to Australian David Hicks, 31. Hicks trained with the Taliban and met with Osama bin Laden, famously asking the terror chief why there were no al Qaeda training manuals printed in English.

Hicks pleaded guilty last month to one count of providing material support for terrorism. As part of the plea bargain, Hicks withdrew his claim that he was tortured during interrogation in Afghanistan. Another unusual condition of his reduced sentence requires that he abide by a gag order and not speak publicly about his situation until March 2008. The American and Australian governments have agreed that Hicks will serve the nine months in an Australian jail.

"Given the result in the Hicks case, we are filing, with the president and the Department of Justice, a request for commutation of John Walker Lindh's sentence," said Lindh attorney James Brosnahan. "It is very simple. It is a question of proportionality. It is a question of fairness and also a question of the religious experience that John Walker Lindh had that was not in any way directed against the United States."

As they have in the past, Lindh's parents and attorneys portrayed him as a religious seeker, young and maybe a little misguided, who sought a spiritual education but ended up in one of the fiercest fights in the history of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, following the September 11 attacks.

Lindh's attorney quoted from his client's October 2002 statement in a Virginia court, in which Lindh flatly denounced Osama bin Laden and all forms of terrorism as contrary to the teachings of Islam.