Bassam is right.
The above syntax is JSP Document and not JSP page.
The clue is the missing '<' and '>'. In JSP Documents, the request time attributes (expressions) do not contain '<' and '>'.
But I couldn't get the above tag to work in
Tomcat 5.0.30
<jsp:forward page="%=request.getParameter('redirectto')%" />
I had to change it to...
<jsp:forward page='%=request.getParameter("redirectto")%' />
as I was getting a compile time error.
C:\jakarta-tomcat-5.0.30\work\Catalina\localhost\vish\org\apache\jsp\xmlCaller_jsp.java:54: unclosed character literal
_jspx_page_context.forward(request.getParameter('redirectto'));
I had to swap the single quotes with the double quotes to get it working. So I am inclined to believe that the above code in question might still be invalid.
What do you say, Bassam?