Lindh Seeks Counterpart in Court

Lawyers for John Walker Lindh want to question another U.S.-born Taliban soldier at a pretrial hearing, but prosecutors said they must await a decision on how other Al Qaeda and Taliban captives would testify.

A government finding released Friday said Esam Hamdi, born of Saudi parents in Louisiana, falls in the same category as other Taliban captives. If he agrees to testify at the July 15 proceeding, an arrangement must be worked out for him to respond from a remote location.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III has suggested that a video hookup may be used for the captured soldiers. This would be a compromise between the defense proposal for in-person questioning and the government’s suggestion of written questions and answers. The judge scheduled a May 28 hearing to decide the issue.

Ellis said no decisions would be made now on whether or how military detainees would testify at Lindh’s trial, which begins with jury selection Aug. 26.

Hamdi was taken from the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in April to a prison at the Norfolk, Va., naval station.

Lindh, who grew up in California, was transferred by the military to the criminal justice system and was indicted on charges of conspiring to murder U.S. nationals, providing support to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and using firearms during crimes of violence. Three of the eight counts carry a life term and the others add up to a potential 90 years in prison.

Lindh’s attorneys will seek to show that he thought he was fighting Afghan opponents of the Taliban and never thought U.S. troops would be fighting in Afghanistan.

They also argue that Lindh had nothing to do with the murder of a CIA agent during a prison uprising in November while he was held captive in Afghanistan.

Hamdi returned to Saudi Arabia with his parents when he was a small child.