How to try a terror suspect.

Byline: The Register-Guard

John Walker Lindh will have his day in court - a civilian court where he will have all the protection the law affords. He'll have every chance to try to prove that he's not guilty of conspiring to kill U.S. citizens and should not spend the rest of his life in prison. The Bush administration made the correct choice by deciding against prosecuting Walker in a military tribunal for his association with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network.

In voluntary statements since his capture in Afghanistan in December, Walker has shown unqualified - and appalling - support for the terrorist activities of the al-Qaeda, including the attacks of Sept. 11 on U.S. soil. He has shown not one shred of remorse. Yet the 20-year-old Californian deserves to be tried for his alleged crimes in a civilian court instead of a military tribunal where some proceedings could occur behind closed doors and he could be deprived of the right to directly confront witnesses.

Walker faces extremely serious charges. He will be tried in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., and could face life in prison if convicted of charges that he plotted to kill U.S. citizens, provided support to terrorist organizations, and engaged in prohibited transactions with the Taliban. The most damning allegation - one Walker has already confirmed in interviews - is that he continued to embrace and fight for the ideals of al-Qaeda even after the Sept. 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 innocent Americans. If the charges are proven to be true, Walker should be held fully accountable and would deserve life imprisonment.

Despite heavy pressure from administration hard-liners, Bush and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft made a wise choice in not charging Walker with treason, which would have presented prosecutors with the formidable, probably impossible, challenge of producing either a confession in open court or the testimony of at least two witnesses to each alleged overt act. Suffice it to say that captured al-Qaeda fighters aren't queueing up to testify against one of their own.

At a news conference Wednesday, Ashcroft laid out a compelling chronology of Walker's transformation from a studious Marin County high school graduate with a passion for Islam to an Arabic-speaking soldier who volunteered for duty on the front lines of an Islamic holy war. Walker told investigators that he had met Osama bin Laden when he dropped by Walker's training camp to visit his fighters and that the terrorist mastermind personally thanked him for "taking part in jihad," or holy war.

The allegations against Walker could scarcely be more serious or the evidence, based on what's been revealed to date, more damning. It will be up to the courts to determine whether Walker is guilty as charged or whether he is, as his family has argued, a naive young man who made some extraordinarily bad choices and ended up in a very bad place at a very bad time.

Now it's up to a court of law to make that determination. That's exactly the way it should be in a country that prides itself on its sense of fairness and justice.