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Assalamu'alaikum,
The Bush administration and John Walker Lindh: who are the real
"conspirators"?
By David Walsh - 25 January 2002
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/walk-j25.shtml
The Bush administration is proceeding with its brutal legal vendetta
against John Walker Lindh, the young American who joined the Taliban in
Afghanistan last year and surrendered to Northern Alliance forces in
November. Walker (who generally goes by his mothers name) arrived in the
US late Wednesday after being taken off the USS Bataan warshipwhere he has
been imprisonedby helicopter and transferred to another military plane at
the airport in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. He was restrained
during the flight to the US. Walker made an initial appearance Thursday in
US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. US Magistrate Judge W. Curtis
Sewell set a preliminary hearing for February 6.
On January 15 the US government charged Walker with four criminal counts.
The charges include two counts of providing material support to terrorist
organizations, conspiring to kill US nationals abroad and engaging in
prohibited transactions with the Taliban.
The charges, which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, are based
almost entirely on Walkers own alleged confession, extracted from him by
the military and FBI on board the US military vessel where he was held
incommunicado for more than six weeks. The 20-year-old was neither granted
access to the lawyer engaged by his parents nor was he apparently informed
that an attorney was available. The International Committee of the Red
Cross was prevented from delivering letters to Walker.
On January 16 Attorney General John Ashcroft defended the charges brought
against Walker and indicated that the government had not foreclosed
charging other crimes against this individual, including those which carry
the death penalty. The attorney general asserted that Walker had waived
his right to remain silent, hypocritically declaring, in regard to the
parents efforts to provide their son with legal counsel, that No other
individual has a right to impose an attorney on him or to choose an
attorney for him.
In his reactionary and ignorant, albeit defensive, comments to the press
Ashcroft did his best to poison public opinion against the young man. John
Walker Lindh chose to fight with the Taliban, Ashcroft said, chose to
train with Al Qaeda, and to be led by Osama bin Laden. We may never know
why he turned his back on our country and our values, but we cannot ignore
that he did. He added: Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal
self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against ones country.
Misdirected Americans cannot seek direction in murderous ideologies and
expect to avoid the consequences.
Ashcrofts denunciations of Walker follow the comment made by George W.
Bush on December 21 that Walker was the first American al Qaeda fighter
that we have captured. This assertion prompted Anthony Arend, a professor
at the Georgetown University law school in Washington, to tell a reporter:
He shouldnt have said it.... It can prejudice various people and make
selecting a jury more difficult.
In response to Ashcrofts inflammatory remarks, Avern Cohn, a district
judge from Detroit, in a letter to the New York Times, observed that the
attorney general appears to have violated Justice Department guidelines on
release of information relating to criminal proceedings that are intended
to ensure that a defendant is not prejudiced when such an announcement is
made.... Mr. Ashcrofts statement and news conference seem to suggest that
there is really no need for a trial. Moreover, evidence has yet to be
presented to a grand jury.
The judge is referring to a section of the Code of Federal Regulations
which prohibits the type of prejudicial comments made by the attorney
general January 16 and in subsequent interviews with the media. The
regulation instructs Justice Department personnel not to furnish any
statement or information for the purpose of influencing the outcome of a
defendants trial, nor shall personnel of the Department furnish any
statement or information, which could reasonably be expected to be
disseminated by means of public communication, if such a statement or
information may reasonably be expected to influence the outcome of a
pending or future trial. Furthermore: Disclosures should only include
incontrovertible, factual matters, and should not include subjective
observations. The regulation specifically prohibits the release of
Statements, admissions, confessions, or alibis attributable to a
defendant.
In his comments Ashcroft clearly violated both the letter and the spirit
of this regulation. The Bush administration treats Justice Department
guidelines with the same contempt it reserves for the Geneva Convention on
the treatment of prisoners of war. At every step the administration
reveals its authoritarian and anti-democratic proclivities.
In a statement to the press on the eve of Ashcrofts comments, attorney
George Harrisa member of the legal team hired by Walkers parentshad
appealed to the US government to stop commenting about his client to the
media.
The decision by the government not to pursue treason charges is an
indication that it feels itself on shaky legal grounds. Ashcrofts
demonization of Walker, echoed by an endlessly servile media, is in part
an effort to compensate for the deficiencies of the governments arguments.
There is reason to believe that the Justice Department, holding the threat
of possibly charging him with a capital crime over his head, may be hoping
that Walker and his lawyers can be pressured into agreeing to plead
guilty. It is likely that the government is desirous to avoid a trial
which could prove politically embarrassing.
Legal experts expect that Walkers lawyers will first of all challenge the
admissibility of their clients alleged confession, which forms the basis
of the governments case. USA Today noted: His lawyers could argue that
Walker, who had been shot in one leg and medicated for two weeks before
his FBI interview, did not intend to waive his right to an attorney. They
could also argue that Walkers statements were coerced. He reportedly had
been held in isolation since being wounded in a failed prison uprising.
We already know, because the incident was captured on videotape, that
Walker was taunted and threatened with death during his interrogation by
CIA agents at the Mazar-i-Sharif prison. What were his conditions aboard a
US navy vessel, entirely isolated and with the full force of the American
war machine bearing down on him?
A former Air Force lawyer, Scott Silliman, told the San Francisco
Chronicle: There is no right to silence in military questioning. Then you
throw FBI agents at him [Walker], and hes got to make a voluntary waiver
of his rights. Did he understand? Douglas Kmiec, law school dean at
Catholic University and generally a shameless apologist for the Republican
Party, commented: There is a very sizable question whether a federal court
would rule these statements as subject to exclusion because they were made
in custody [without a lawyer present].
Criminal complaint
The criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department against Walker
fails to substantiate the charges that have been brought against him. It
largely recounts or purports to recount Walkers experiences since May 2001
when the young American left a religious school where he was studying and
joined a paramilitary camp run by the Harakat ul-Mujahideen (HUM), to
fight in Kashmir on behalf of Islamic fundamentalist forces against the
Indian military.
In late May, according to the complaint, Walker traveled to Afghanistan
and made his way to a Taliban recruiting center in Kabul. As he spoke
Arabic but not any of the Afghan languages or dialects, he was assigned to
the al Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden. Walker allegedly attended a
training camp, operated by bin Laden, where he received military training.
He was apparently offered several options, including the possibility of
conducting operations in the US or Israel; he declined that offer and
chose instead to fight on the front lines against the Northern Alliance.
Walker, along with his unit, rotated in two-week shifts in the Takhar
trenches against the Alliance. When US bombs began to fall the members of
his group retreated to Kunduz and, after a withdrawal was negotiated with
General Abdul Rashid Dostum, surrendered their arms and were trucked to
Mazar-i-Sharif prison. Shortly after he was interrogated by CIA agents,
fighting broke out at the prison and Walker, wounded in the leg, retreated
to the basement with his comrades. He was thus not a witness to the
massacre of the prisoners carried out by Northern Alliance and US forces.
Walker stood at one point in cold water for 20 hours before a surrender
was arranged and he was transported to a hospital near Mazar-i-Sharif.
The notion that Walker conspired to kill American nationals is ludicrous.
He joined the forces fighting to defend the Taliban regime against the
Northern Alliance in what was then a civil war. The United States was not
engaged in a conflict with Afghanistan and indeed has never officially
declared war. In the wake of September 11, the US began bombing the
positions of his unit; then came his surrender. If anything, the American
military conspired to kill Walker and his comrades who were not in any
position to respond.
The remaining charges deal with Walkers alleged dealings with and support
for foreign terrorist organizations. As we have noted before, to apprehend
those principally responsible not merely for transactions with, but the
very existence of these terrorist organizations, the Justice Department
needs to look considerably closer to home. The Taliban regime and Islamic
fundamentalism both in Afghanistan and Pakistan are largely the products
of American intervention in the region. These forces were deliberately
incited, funded and armed by Washington in the 1970s and 1980s as part of
the ongoing destabilization effort aimed against the Soviet Union. The
consequences have been tragic, both for the peoples of the region and the
victims of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks on
September 11.
The venom directed at Walker is part of the attempt by American
authorities to throw dust in the publics eyes and cover their own tracks.
Walker is obviously a disoriented young man, whose quest for spiritual
purity led him down a terribly mistaken path. He is not the first nor will
he be the last young person to be repulsed by the state of American
society, but in the current ideological climatewith its worship of money,
greed and ruthless individualismhe was unable to find his way to any
progressive alternative. There is no need to feel any sympathy for his
allegiance to Islamic fundamentalism, a deeply reactionary political and
social force. Nonetheless, the attempt by the Bush administration and the
right-wing media ( Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, the
Murdoch-owned television and press) to transform Walker into a hard-core
militant and traitor is as vile as it is inaccurate.
Robert Pelton, the individual who shot the tape of Walker on his hospital
bed (and sold it to CNN for a large amount of money), told a television
interviewer, Hes actually a very gentle, sort of unassuming person. Hes
not a militant person at all. He later commented to NBC, He didnt seem
like a very bellicose person. He was very sensitive. I mean, his whole
concern was more the moral and religious ... and not the fighting part ...
This guy struck me as a [person] that should be going to poetry readings.
The Bush administration is pursuing Walker so relentlessly, first, because
it intends to make an example of him for the purpose of demonstrating its
power to pulverize those who resist its policies. Moreover, the central
fact of the case is disturbing to the political and media establishment:
that a well-educated young man from the Bay Area should turn his back so
resolutely on the values of American capitalism. For all its denunciations
and assertions that Walker is universally despised, the establishment is
concerned that there may be more than a few youth who will find something
admirable in Walkers opposition, if not in the cause he espoused. Also, US
authorities are determined to silence Walker one way or another because
what he knows about the conflict in Afghanistan (including the massacre at
the prison) and what he might communicate to the American public are
potentially damaging.
The US government and the media are attempting to focus the anger over
September 11 onto Walker, suggesting that he is a sinister figure somehow
responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Walker is no more to
blame for the terrorist attacks than is an impoverished Pakistani who
joined the Taliban out of some mistaken sense that he could strike a blow
against American imperial power. In general, Walkers role in the
operations of bin Laden and the war in Afghanistan is so infinitesimal
that one would need a magnifying glass to discover it.
Who are the genuine criminals and conspirators? John Walker, a misguided
idealist and Taliban foot soldier, or the government and oil industry
officials who, in the selfish and reckless pursuit of American
geopolitical interests, have inflicted only misery and suffering on the
Afghan and Pakistani populations? Will Carter, Reagan, Brzezinskithe
architects of the US policy in the regionface prosecution? Or CIA and
American military officials who collaborated with Osama bin Laden and his
co-thinkers in the 1980s? Or executives of Unocal, the US oil company,
which supported the Taliban in its consolidation of power in 1996, in the
interest of a pipeline deal? Or officials of the Clinton administration,
who gave tacit blessing to the Taliban regime? Or the elder George Bush
and his cohorts like Frank Carlucci, who have had the closest contacts
with the Saudi ruling elite and the bin Laden family?
Moreover, there is the conspiracy of silence surrounding the events of
September 11 themselves. Will any investigation be launched to ascertain
whether officials in the US military and intelligence apparatus had
foreknowledge of the terrorist attack?
Any serious discussion of the Walker case, in all its tragic dimensions,
must address itself to these and other questions.
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