Opinion: Lindh will have his day in court

The Bush administration made the right decision in choosing to prosecute John Walker Lindh in a civilian court in northern Virginia on charges of conspiring to kill Americans in Afghanistan and aiding foreign terrorists.

While a debate apparently raged within the administration over how to proceed against Lindh, a 20-year-old Californian, the decision to charge him criminally in federal court makes sense. President Bush established military tribunals by executive order to try al-Qaida terrorists and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan. As a U.S. citizen, Lindh would be outside the scope of the president's order, which applies to noncitizens. There is no reason to believe justice cannot be done in a civilian court.

The charges against Lindh, who arrived in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday to await trial, seem about right in light of confessions he reportedly made to his American interrogators. According to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Lindh trained with terrorists in the use of weapons and explosives at an al-Qaida camp and knew that the group was at war against America. On one occasion, he met Osama bin Laden, who thanked him for his service to jihad. Lindh allegedly was a willing warrior for the Taliban even after American forces joined the fighting on the side of the Northern Alliance. If he is convicted of crimes against his country, Lindh will have no one to blame but himself.

In announcing the charges, Ashcroft explained that Lindh had not been charged with treason, a crime that carries a death sentence, because of the heavy evidentiary burdens associated with it. That is not to say Lindh will be a free man any time soon. If convicted of the crimes with which he has been charged, Lindh could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Lindh is about to get his day in court. He will have a public trial within the strictures of our Constitution. This is the way America treats its accused, and it is far more justice than Lindh would have ever gotten under the Taliban.

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