WASHINGTON, June 15: US officials violated John Walker Lindh’s Fifth Amendment rights by improperly interrogating him in custody, his attorneys said on Friday in arguing that incriminating statements made by the American Taliban should be thrown out.
In court documents filed with the U.S. District Court, Lindh’s lawyers said U.S. interrogators have failed to offer Lindh his so-called Miranda rights. The rights, which require all suspects be told they have the right to an attorney and to remain silent, are a bedrock of the American legal system.
Lindh, a 21-year-old Californian captured in Afghanistan last year while fighting with the Taliban, was captured by anti-Taliban fighters in November last year and transferred to US military custody on Dec 1.
“After being taken into U.S. custody, Mr. Lindh was held incommunicado and repeatedly interrogated without any attempt to advise him of his Fifth Amendment rights until Dec. 9,” his attorneys said in a memorandum to the court.
“This is true despite the fact that the interrogators were well aware of their duty to give Mr. Lindh advice of rights.”
“The government does not contend that any warnings were provided to Mr. Lindh prior to Dec. 9, 2001,” the attorneys wrote. “Therefore, any statements allegedly made by Mr. Lindh in response to government questioning prior to that date ... must be suppressed.”
The statements given by Lindh while in Afghanistan help form the basis for the government’s case against him.
Lindh has pleaded not guilty to a 10-count indictment charging him with conspiring with and aiding the Taliban and the Al Qaeda network.
In court filings detailing what will likely be the defense’s main argument against the government, Lindh’s attorneys also gave a detailed account of their client’s physical and mental condition leading up to his arrest and conditions of his confinement while in U.S. custody.
OPPRESSIVE CONDITIONS: They said that by the time Lindh was detained, he had been shot in the leg and narrowly escaped death several times while hiding for seven days in a basement. He also witnessed the deaths of many other prisoners.
Lindh and other Taliban fighters fled to the basement following a prison uprising in Mazar-i-Sharif, during which CIA agent Johnny Micheal Spann was killed. Spann questioned Lindh before the uprising but the CIA agent never identified himself, the defense said.
Once out of the basement and in U.S. custody, Lindh said he was questioned several times by special forces officers and medics. Lindh asked military interrogators when he could see a lawyer, but was told that the officials did not know when or if he would be allowed to see one, the defense said.
“Nor did they tell Mr. Lindh, as they knew, that his parents had retained counsel for him or that his parents’ attempts to communicate that information to him through the International Red Cross had been thwarted,” they wrote.
Lindh was stripped, blindfolded, bound to a stretcher and held in a metal shipping container during a stay at the U.S. military’s Camp Rhino in Kandahar. The defense said that while he was there and being interrogated the government left the bullet in Lindh’s leg, and quoted a government report as saying it was left “for later removal as evidence”.
The defense said when Lindh was finally read an “advice of rights” form by an FBI agent on Dec. 9, Lindh signed it but under “highly intimidating and coercive circumstances created by the government.”
Lindh was sleep-deprived, malnourished and in pain at the time, with the bullet and shrapnel still lodged in his body.
“Mr. Lindh reasonably perceived that only by signing the form could he hope for relief for the oppressive conditions of his captivity,” the defense said.
They said the FBI agent failed to tell Lindh his parents had retained counsel for him or that there were many military lawyers in the vicinity who could have been provided to him.
The government has denied Lindh was mistreated or that his rights were violated.—Reuters
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