From rxpgnews.com
Parents of 'American Taliban' appeal for mercy
By DPA,
Apr 6, 2007 - 9:25:56 AM
San Francisco, April 6 - The parents of John Walker Lindh, a Californian who became known as 'The American Taliban' when he was seized in Afghanistan in 2001, have appealed to President Bush to commute or reduce his 20-year sentence.
The appeal came after a US military tribunal handed down a nine-month sentence last week to Australian David Hicks, a confessed Al Qaeda trainee who pleaded guilty to charges of supporting terrorism by readying to fight Americans in Afghanistan in 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday.
Lindh, a 26-year-old convert to Islam, has 13 years left of a sentence he received in July 2002, when he pleaded guilty to aiding and carrying weapons for the Taliban.
'It's quite a difference,' his mother, Marilyn Walker, said in comparing the two cases. 'John did not go to Afghanistan to fight against America. He never fought against America. John has spoken out strongly against terrorism in any form.'
A spokesman for the defence department said the two cases were fundamentally different. Lindh was arrested along with Afghan soldiers after a prison uprising in November 2001 in Afghanistan where Taliban fighters were being held. CIA agent Johnny 'Mike' Spann was slain during the uprising not long after he questioned Lindh there.
Australia's 'Hicks was never implicated in anyone's death,' Commander Jeffrey Gordon was quoted as saying.
Lindh's lawyer James Brosnahan claimed that prosecutors have no evidence implicating Lindh in Spann's death. He said that the family decided to petition the president due to a 'climate change' since the months after Al Qaeda's attacks in the US on Sept 11, 2001, in which Americans are less fearful and 'in a better mood to get justice'.
The attorney also said Lindh had a 'genuine religious experience - that I think the president can understand'.
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