WITH John Walker Lindh facing terrorism charges in a civilian court, Americans on Tuesday debated whether the captured American Taliban fighter deserved to be spared the death penalty.

From Boston to Los Angeles, Walker's fellow citizens appeared split over US Attorney General John Ashcroft's announcement on Tuesday that spared Walker treason charges that could have brought him the death penalty.

"I'm disappointed in this decision," said Peter Thomas, a Washington health-care attorney.

"He wasn't just part of a plot, he took arms against an army that was in the country to defend freedom. He merits more severe punishment."

Walker (20), who grew up in middle-class California, raised a national stir when he showed up among hardened Taliban fighters captured in northern Afghanistan last year.

Americans were still stung by the deaths of about 3 000 people in the Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington, blamed on Osama bin Laden, harboured in Afghanistan by the now-vanquished Taliban.

On Tuesday, some described Walker, a delicate-featured youth who converted to radical Islam as a teenager, as simply being misguided. Others saw him as worse than the fiercest member of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Ed Morris, a music journalist from Nashville, Tennessee, said Ashcroft's announcement seemed "a measured and fitting" decision.

"Perhaps President George W Bush is learning through the examples of his own daughters that young people sometimes do dumb things which may not indicate permanent defects of character," he said.

Morris added: "I wish he (Bush) had shown the same wisdom and restraint when he was signing death warrants in Texas."

Ashcroft announced that Walker was charged with conspiracy to kill Americans overseas, providing support and resources to designated foreign terrorist organisations, including al Qaeda and engaging in prohibited transactions with the Taliban.

The charges carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. Ashcroft said treason, which could have posed the death penalty, would have been difficult to prove but had not been ruled out.

Not good enough, according to Jack Bartley, a 60-year-old from Milwaukee, who worried that anything less than treason was too soft.

"Some of the reason we're in this situation is we start to feel sorry for people who are taking up against the US and we've got to stop doing that," he said. "We need to be tougher about our own, because we were hit here."

Alison Graham, who was strolling through New York's Times Square, agreed: "He should be subject to the death penalty."

But across the country in Los Angeles, 23-year-old architect Alissa Arnold said her Roman Catholic faith made her leery of the death penalty.

"I'm not very big on the whole revenge thing," she said.

"Two wrongs don't make a right. And with a life prison term, he's definitely not going to be living the best life anyway."

Meanwhile, Leslie Stoehr (30), who runs a souvenir stand inside Boston's Faneuil Hall, said she thought even life in prison was too harsh for Walker.

"I feel sorry for the guy," she said. "I know he should be punished, but I'm not sure sending him to prison for the rest of his life will do any good.

"He was a young guy, easily influenced. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," she added. -Nampa-Reuters