Ashcroft Charges NY Attorney With Aiding Terrorism
truthout.org
----snip----
She remained defiant after the hearing, as she stood outside the
courthouse in a light rain.
"I do think this will become, hopefully, a touchstone case," she said,
"as many of my cases have, something that points out the limits the
government can go to in prosecuting people they don't like."
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The full text, for the link-avoidant RWers -g- ...
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nytimes.com
Lawyer Helped in a Terror Plot, Indictment Says
By Benjamin Weiser and Robert F. Worth
April 10, 2002
Federal prosecutors charged yesterday that a New York lawyer
helped one of her clients, an imprisoned Egyptian sheik who was
convicted of plotting a wave of terror in New York City, continue to direct
terrorist operations from his prison cell in Minnesota.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who announced the charges in New
York, said the lawyer, Lynne F. Stewart, helped Sheik Omar Abdel
Rahman pass messages to leaders of the Islamic Group, a terrorist
organization he once led in Egypt.
The government accused her of covering up her activities for Mr.
Abdel Rahman, the blind Muslim cleric who is serving a life sentence for
his 1995 conviction in a terrorist plot to blow up New York landmarks
and is still regarded as the spiritual leader of the Egyptian group.
Prosecutors said that in May 2000, Ms. Stewart distracted jail
guards during a meeting while an Arabic translator took instructions
from Mr. Abdel Rahman, which were later passed on to the Islamic
Group in Egypt.
Mr. Abdel Rahman's instructions included a message to his
followers in Egypt that they should no longer abide by a cease-fire in
terrorist activities. The cease-fire was begun after a 1997 attack in
Luxor, Egypt, that killed 62 people, including 58 foreign tourists. The
Islamic Group claimed responsibility for the attack.
When Ms. Stewart was asked in court how she pleaded, she
replied, "Emphatically not guilty." The judge, John G. Koeltl of Federal
District Court in Manhattan, released her on $500,000 personal bond.
She remained defiant after the hearing, as she stood outside the
courthouse in a light rain.
"I do think this will become, hopefully, a touchstone case," she said,
"as many of my cases have, something that points out the limits the
government can go to in prosecuting people they don't like."
She declined to address the allegations that Mr. Abdel Rahman was
using her to send messages, but she said of the government's case
against her, "Prove it."
"They've arrested the lawyer and the interpreter," she said. "How
much further? Are you going to arrest the lady who cleans the sheik's
cell?"
The charges against Ms. Stewart, a silver-haired 62-year-old,
stunned her colleagues in legal circles, where she has long been
regarded as a fearless and outspoken champion of unpopular clients
like David J. Gilbert, the Weather Underground member who was found
guilty in a 1981 Brinks armored car robbery in Rockland County that left
four people dead, and Salvatore Gravano, the Mafia killer whom she is
now representing in a drug case in Brooklyn.
Her arraignment was packed with lawyers, many of whom appeared
as a show of support. Some said the indictment seemed heavy handed,
even in the post-Sept. 11 environment, and they contended that the
charges could chill lawyers in their advocacy for clients.
In announcing the charges against Ms. Stewart and the three other
defendants, Mr. Ashcroft also said that the government would use Mr.
Abdel Rahman's case to make the first use of a new rule that allows the
Bureau of Prisons to monitor conversations between lawyers and
inmates who are threats to commit "future acts of violence or terrorism."
The rule, announced last fall, spawned sharp debate among lawyers
and others who questioned its constitutionality. Mr. Ashcroft suggested
Mr. Abdel Rahman's case helped instigate the new policy, which he
said was announced last October "with the knowledge, which could not
be publicly shared at that time for fear of exposing Americans to greater
risk, that inmates such as Sheik Abdel Rahman were attempting to
subvert our system of justice for terrorist ends."
Mr. Abdel Rahman, 63, who was sentenced to life in prison plus 65
years, has been held in a federal prison in Rochester, Minn., under
restrictive conditions because of fears he might pass messages to
outsiders.
Under the rules, which have been applied to about 15 prisoners
nationwide, he is barred from communicating with virtually anyone but
his lawyers. They signed affirmations promising to abide by the rules,
But Mr. Ashcroft said Ms. Stewart of Brooklyn, and the translator,
Mohammed Yousry, 45, of East Elmhurst, N.Y., "repeatedly and
willfully violated these orders in order to maintain Sheik Abdel Rahman's
influence over the terrorist activities of the Islamic Group."
Mr. Yousry and a third defendant, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, 42, of
Staten Island, also pleaded not guilty yesterday. Mr. Yousry was
released on $750,000 bond, while Mr. Sattar was held pending a bail
hearing.
The fourth defendant, an Egyptian named Yassir Al-Sirri, was
arrested in Britain last fall, and was charged with conspiring in the
assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the commander of the anti-
Taliban Northern Alliance.
A federal prosecutor, Joseph F. Bianco, said in court that the United
States will seek his extradition in the charges announced yesterday.
In the indictment, all four defendants were accused of providing
material support to a terrorist organization, including financial
assistance and the facilitating of conversations about the Islamic
Group's activities, which carries a 15-year sentence.
Ms. Stewart was charged separately with making false statements
and conspiring to defraud the government, allegations stemming from
what prosecutors say was her broken promise not to be a conduit for
Mr. Abdel Rahman.
Ms. Stewart's lawyer, Susan Tipograph, said after court, "The
charges are troubling because everything she is charged with has to do
with attorney-client privilege."
Mr. Sattar and Mr. Al-Sirri were also charged with inciting violence to
promote the group's goals, including an edict issued in October 2000
under Mr. Abdel Rahman's name titled, "Fatwah mandating the
bloodshed of Israelis everywhere."
Although the indictment charges that the Islamic Group has forged
alliances with other terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, the terror
network led by Osama bin Laden, Mr. Ashcroft said that there was no
evidence linking the messages sent by Mr. Abdel Rahman to the Sept.
11 terror attacks.
Mr. bin Laden, however, has long cited Mr. Abdel Rahman's
imprisonment as one of the justifications for Al Qaeda's attacks against
the United States.
According to the indictment, Mr. Sattar worked in New York as a
"communications center" and fund-raiser for the Islamic Group. He was
accused of arranging and participating in three-way telephone calls
connecting terrorist leaders around the world to further the group's
activities.
Mr. Al-Sirri, who ran the Islamic Observation Center in London, was
also charged with fund-raising and helping with communications for the
group.
Late yesterday, F.B.I. agents could be seen leaving Ms. Stewart's
law office at 351 Broadway (Franklin Street), carrying two computers, a
box filled with sealed envelopes and a large sealed evidence bag.
Martin R. Stolar, a lawyer whose office is near Ms. Stewart's, said,
"They went through everything, hard drives, her files, books, you name
it. It's scary when you walk into an attorney's office and see that type of
thing."
washingtonpost.com
9.html
Charged Attorney; An Advocate for Radicals Whom Most Lawyers
Spurn
By Michael Powell Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 10, 2002; Page A09
NEW YORK, April 9 -- Short and roundish, a grandmother who often
has a New York Mets cap perched atop her head, Lynne Stewart does
not fit the stereotype of a radical attorney.
But Stewart, a former librarian, has defended a Who's Who of
radicals and others in the past two decades. Her clients range from
Weather Underground leaders to a drug dealer who shot six police
officers to mob hit man and snitch Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
Now Stewart, 62, stands accused of taking the role of terrorist's
accomplice. The U.S. attorney in Manhattan indicted her and three
other people today on charges of helping Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a
63-year-old cleric and convicted terrorist, pass messagesfrom prison to
his fundamentalist followers.
Prosecutors accuse Stewart of trying to trick prison guards during
her visits to Rahman's cell in Rochester, Minn. They allege that she
spoke in English legalese while an Arab translator, who was also
indicted today, spoke of Islamic revolution in Arabic.
Stewart stood ramrod straight in federal court today and declared
herself "emphatically not guilty" as her defense attorneys watched from
a crowded courtroom viewing area. She was released on bond.
To a person, these attorneys describe Stewart as a woman whose
revolutionary ardor is little diminished since her youth. But they say that
charges of aiding a fundamentalist terrorist organization stand at odds
with all that they know about her.
"She has the demeanor of your kindergarten teacher, but she was a
brilliant courtroom advocate," says Ronald Kuby, a defense attorney
and protégé of William Kunstler, the late grand vizier of the radical legal
left. "She's the bravest and strongest advocate for the downtrodden."
Even opponents profess respect for this mild-mannered woman with
unkempt gray hair. A former prosecutor describes her as a nuts-and-
bolts attorney who was always courteous in court.
Kuby and other colleagues speculated that her clients might have
used Stewart, who does not speak Arabic.
"Little did she realize," Kuby said, "that when she was saying, 'So
tell me, Sheik Omar, should I file the papers', her interpreter was
saying: 'So tell me, Sheik Omar, when should we smite the infidel?'"
That said, Stewart is a committed radical, and has rarely shied from
defending even violent acts of resistance to what she sees as
oppressive state power. She has defended several radicals convicted of
murdering police officers; took on the case of the Warriors Society, a
Mohawk Indian group accused of imposing a reign of terror on upstate
New York reservations, and successfully defended Larry Davis, a drug
dealer who shot six police officers.
She and co-counsel Kunstler cast the shooting as self-defense
against a ring of drug-dealing officers. They offered no proof, but Davis
was acquitted of attempted murder.
She spoke of her personal politics in an interview seven years ago
with the New York Times. "I don't believe in anarchistic violence but in
directed violence," she said. "That would be violence directed at the
institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism and sexism, and at the
people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions, and
accompanied by popular support."
Still, her decision to represent Rahman was not universally
supported by this city's large left-wing defense bar. Some questioned
lending her legal talents to a man who yearns to create a theocracy that
would likely crush lawyers such as herself.
"I reached a point in life where I began to question at whose service I
was putting my skills," said Kuby, who for a short time was Rahman's
attorney. The blind cleric is serving a life term in federal prison for his
role in a 1993 conspiracy to blow up the United Nations, a New York
FBI building and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.
But, Kuby emphasized, American jurisprudence depends upon an
adversarial system and he had the luxury of choosing not to defend
such people because Stewart would do so.
This is not Stewart's first brush with that system. In 1991, she was
charged with criminal contempt for refusing to reveal to a judge who was
paying her legal fees in a drug case. She fought the charges for 10
years, even as other attorneys in the case cooperated with the judge
and her client became a state witness.
Stewart faces charges that carry a possible sentence of 40 years,
but few friends expect to see her intimidated. As she once told a
reporter: "When the revolution comes to this country, it'll be as
American as apple pie and baseball."
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational
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