Coastal Post Online
MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS
MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
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(415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924
September, 2004
John Walker Lindh Update:
Could Abu Ghraib Have Been Avoided?
By Jim Scanlon
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It is
a cliche that all history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.
In the strange case of John Walker Lindh, the "Fairfax Taliban" who
converted to Islam and traveled to Afghanistan to fight in a civil war, the
farce came first, the tragedy later. After being pulled, more dead than alive,
from a medieval fortress dungeon, he was held incommunicado for months while he
was convicted in the media of murder and treason by the president of the United
States, his father, a former president of the US, the Secretary of State, the
Secretary of Defense, US Attorney General and hundreds, if not thousands of
Cable TV commentators, experts, and radio talk show blowhards.
His show trial, on numerous counts of conspiracy to murder US citizens,
fizzled out and in the end, nine counts were dismissed When Walker pled guilty
in Federal District Court in Alexandria Virginia to one count of supplying
services to the Taliban. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
After sentencing, Walker's attorney, James Brosnahan, told a National Public
Radio interviewer " ... one of the things that bothers me about our mood
in America is we don't need the facts anymore. It used to be that you had to
have evidence against somebody before you could make an accusation. But I am a
little concerned that we are not quite as free as we were before September 11.
What was tragic about this case was that Walker's court documents presented
by his defense team clearly alluded to his being subjected to abusive degrading
threatening military detention practices including souvenir video and digital
images taken by army and navy spectators. Had Walker gone to trail the abusive
interrogation practices of US military intelligence might have been exposed to
the public and the foreign policy disaster of Abu Ghraib might have been
avoided.
Documents obtained by the Coastal Post from Walker's enormous file of 14
thick tomes indicate that he was willfully and needlessly abused while in US custody and paradoxically, as bad as it was, he would most likely not have survived much
longer if he had remained with our Afghan allies.
Walker's defense team made, what would normally be a routine
"discovery" requests of the justice department for information that
might show that he was innocent of the charges. These included statements made
by Walker under interrogation, who interrogated him, where, when and for how
long? Who held him in custody and for how long? Information on the treatment of
his wounds on board two US Navy ships in the Arabian Sea including the bullet
taken out of his thigh. The bullet wound occurred during the massacre following
the uprising of Taliban who surrendered. The Attorney General's Office refused
the request for discovery.
The defense team requested photographs and videos taken of Walker while he
was in custody particularly those taken before and after he was stripped and
placed in a metal shipping container, i.e. from December 7 to 14, 2001 and
while he was in the brig of US ships at sea. Photos, videos and documents
relating to his medical treatment between December 1, and January 24, 2002 were
requested. Also requested were souvenir photos taken by US navy, marine and
other military personnel.
The government resisted these requests and. in a sense overwhelmed and
sapped Walker, his family and his defense team with a smothering blanket of
prejudicial publicity. Had the reasonable requests of Walker's defense team
been honored the disaster of Abu Ghraib might not have happened, or, at least,
not happened the way it did.
Now, Walker's defense team has asked the US Justice Department to review his
case since in view of the fact that the government now plans to release Yasser
Esam Hamdi to his family in Saudi Arabia. Hamdi is technically a US citizen having been born here. Walker, who was born in Washington DC and grew up there
before moving with his mother to San Anselmo, is being treated more harshly
than Hamdi who is, functionally, a Saudi Arabian citizen.
Hamdi's attorney claimed on the Pacifica Radio program "Democracy
Now" that Walker, a California Muslim, received more favorable treatment
than Hamdi who is an Arab Muslim.
This Just In
"John Walker, the Musical" is one of the 200 theatricals being
presented at the New York International Fringe Festival through August 29,
2004.
In the presentation, an evil Texas president sings, "If It Ain't In
America", a mother sings of her unconditional love, "I Support
You" and a "Justice Department do-gooder", according to the NY
Times, " sings with anarchist punk energy".