[News] Lynne Stewart Convicted of Helping Terrorists
News at freedomarchives.org
News at freedomarchives.org
Thu Feb 10 16:31:55 EST 2005
Lawyer Convicted of Helping Terrorists
February 10, 2005
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - A veteran civil rights lawyer was convicted Thursday of crossing
the line by smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients
a radical Egyptian sheik to his terrorist disciples on the outside.
The jury has been deliberating off-and-on over the past month in the case
of Lynne Stewart, 65, a firebrand, left-wing activist known for
representing radicals and revolutionaries in her 30 years on the New York
legal scene. The jury deliberated 13 days in all.
Stewart faces up to 20 years in prison on charges that included conspiracy,
giving material support to terrorists and defrauding the U.S. government.
Stewart sat stoically in a courtroom filled with her supporters, who gasped
when the verdict was read.
The trial focused attention on the line between zealous advocacy and
criminal behavior by a lawyer. Some defense lawyers saw the case as a
government warning to attorneys to tread carefully in terrorism cases.
The jury also convicted a U.S. postal worker, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, of
plotting to "kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country" by publishing an
edict urging the killing of Jews and their supporters. A third defendant,
Arabic interpreter Mohamed Yousry, was convicted of providing material
support to terrorists. Sattar could face life in prison and Yousry up to 20
years.
Stewart was the lawyer for Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind sheik sentenced to
life in prison in 1996 for conspiring to assassinate Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak (news - web sites) and destroy several New York landmarks,
including the U.N. building and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. Stewart's
co-defendants also had close ties to Abdel-Rahman.
Prosecutors said Stewart and the others carried messages between the sheik
and senior members of a Egyptian-based terrorist organization, helping
spread Abdel-Rahman's venomous call to kill those who did not subscribe to
his extremist interpretation of Islamic law.
At the time, the sheik was in solitary confinement in Minnesota under
special prison rules to keep him from communicating with anyone except his
wife and his lawyers.
Prosecutor Andrew Dember argued that Stewart and her co-defendants
essentially "broke Abdel-Rahman out of jail, made him available to the
worst kind of criminal we find in this world terrorists."
Stewart, who once represented Weather Underground radicals and mob turncoat
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, repeatedly declared her innocence, maintaining
she was unfairly targeted by overzealous prosecutors.
But she also testified that she believed violence was sometimes necessary
to achieve justice: "To rid ourselves of the entrenched, voracious type of
capitalism that is in this country that perpetuates sexism and racism, I
don't think that can come nonviolently."
A major part of the prosecution's case was Stewart's 2000 release of a
statement withdrawing the sheik's support for a cease-fire in Egypt by his
militant followers. Prosecutors, though, could point to no violence that
resulted from the statement.
Videotape of prison conversations between Stewart and the sheik also were
played for jurors recordings the defense denounced as an intrusion into
attorney-client privilege.
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