LYNNE'S GRIN
NEW YORK POST
Editorial
October 17, 2006
Twenty-eight months for Lynn Stewart? Why not 28 minutes?
Why not an apology to the convicted terrorist facilitator for the inconvenience of having to stand trial in the first place?
All the radical activist did was collaborate with terrorist mastermind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman - an architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
She could have - and should have - been sentenced to 30 years.
Instead, U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl - former President Bill Clinton's gift to the federal bench - gave her just 28 months, and stayed execution of the sentence pending her appeals.
And then he all but nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"It is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Stewart performed a public service, not only to the court but to the nation," intoned Koeltl.
The judge - a former First Amendment lawyer - hailed Stewart as a "lawyer to the poor and the unpopular" and rejected a lengthy term, having found "no evidence that any victim was in fact harmed."
Imagine that: As long as the terrorists and their facilitators, like Lynne Stewart, don't actually pull off another 9/11 - that is to say, as long as they don't kill thousands of Americans - they get wrist slaps.
So, let's recap:
Abdel-Rahman, a k a "the blind sheik," led the group that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six. He was then convicted of conspiring to destroy the U.N. headquarters, the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.
Though she claimed she was only acting as a zealous defender, Stewart wasn't convicted of offering legal advice. A jury - after 13 long days of deliberations, following six months of testimony - found that she had smuggled into prison a message to Rahman from terrorist Rifa'l Ahman Tara. The message asked the sheik to support renewed Islamic violence in Egypt.
Then she smuggled back out a coded dispatch that led to the dissolution of a cease-fire between Abdel-Rahman's Islamic Group and the Egyptian government.
How many innocent people were "harmed" - that is, killed - as a result of that collaboration can only be guessed. Apparently, Egyptians don't count as "victims" in Judge Koeltl's eyes.
When she took on the sheik's case, Stewart agreed to and signed rules that barred her from passing any messages to and from her client. Yet she now claims she only "tested the limits" solely to "serve my client."
On the witness stand, however, Stewart made clear that when it came to Abdel-Rahman and his murderous thugs, she was not just a legal mouthpiece - she was a zealous supporter.
"I believe that entrenched institutions will not be changed except by violence," she boasted. "I believe in the politics that lead to violence being exerted by people on their own behalf."
Some First Amendment heroine.
Some "public service . . . to the nation."
And so much for the notion - still held by many Democrats - that the War on Terror should be fought in courtrooms, not on the battlefield.
Should Osama bin Laden ever find himself in clueless John Koeltl's court, he'd likely get no more than time served hiding in his cave.
As for Stewart, she was enjoying herself yesterday.
She went into court, buoyed by hundreds of supporters, and begged for the right to "live out the rest of my life productively, lovingly, righteously."
Afterward, she said of her sentence: "You get time off for good behavior usually at the end of your prison term. I got it at the beginning."
Then, she added - with contempt? - "I can do that standing on my head."
She was grinning broadly. But the joke was on the American people.
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