News Archives - February 2005 - Lynne Stewart was convicted of helping terrorists
by smuggling messages of violence from one of her imprisoned clients - a radical Egyptian
sheik - to his terrorist disciples on the outside.
The verdict left Stewart, 65, a firebrand, left-wing activist who has represented radicals
and revolutionaries in 30 years on the New York legal scene, slumped in her chair.
She vowed to appeal and blamed the conviction on evidence that included videotape of Osama
bin Laden urging support for her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who prosecutors said
communicated with the outside world with Stewart's help.
"When you put Osama bin Laden in a courtroom and ask the jury to ignore it, you're
asking a lot," she said. "I know I committed no crime. I know what I did was
right."
Stewart said, "We are not going to give up. We're going to fight on. This is the
beginning of a larger struggle."
The anonymous jury also convicted a U.S. postal worker, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, of conspiracy
for 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.
The verdict came from a jury that has deliberated off-and-on over the past month in the
case on charges that carry a potential of 45 years in prison for Stewart,
although lawyers have said it was likely Stewart would face a sentence of about 20 years.
She will remain free on bail but must stay in New York until her sentencing. Stewart was
convicted of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, defrauding the United
States and making false statements.
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 purpose of this prosecution ... was to send a message to lawyers who represent
alleged terrorists that it's dangerous to do so," said Michael Ratner, president of
the Center for Constitutional Rights, who was not involved in the case.
However, Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island who
conducted a panel on lawyers and terrorism at the American Association of Law Schools'
recent annual meeting, called the verdict reasonable.
"I think lawyers need to be advocates, but they don't need to be accomplices,"
he said. "I think the evidence suggested that Lynne Stewart had crossed the
line."
The jury heard two vastly different portraits of Stewart. Prosecutors described her as an
essential and willing aide to terrorists, while defense attorney Michael Tigar focused on
a lengthy legal career of representing the destitute and the despised.
The trial before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl began in late June 2004, with
prosecutor Christopher Morvillo telling the jury in his opening statement that Stewart
"used her status as a lawyer as a cloak to smuggle messages into and out of
prison." He said she allowed Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik, to "incite
terrorism."
Abdel-Rahman was sentenced to life in prison after his 1995 conviction for conspiring to
assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and destroy several New York City landmarks.
His lawyer was Stewart, whose client list includes Weather Underground radicals and mob
turncoat Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
Stewart said she believed violence was sometimes necessary to rid society of evil,
even in America.
"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," she said.
Prosecutors said Stewart broke a promise to the government by letting outsiders
communicate with the sheik, who was in solitary confinement under special prison
rules designed to stop him from communicating with anyone except his wife and his lawyers.
Videotape of those prison conferences, along with audio transmissions and accompanying
translations of telephone calls between Sattar and terrorists in other countries, provided
the bulk of the government's case against the defendants.
In particular, prosecutors said Stewart's release of a statement withdrawing the sheik's
support for a cease-fire in Egypt by his militant followers proved her guilt.
The judge warned jurors before the case began that it had nothing to do with the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks.
The evidence, though, included video images of bin Laden at a meeting with one of the
sheik's sons and a bin Laden associate who spoke by telephone with Sattar. Another piece
of evidence was a fiery message sent by the sheik with the words, "From the American
Prison."
"Drown (American) ships, shoot down their airplanes, kill them on earth in the sea or
in the sky, kill them everywhere you find them," he said, according to the government
exhibit.
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In 1991, the Sheik came to America on that B-2 visa. He strolled right
through Customs, at JFK, unscathed. (Again, this happened at a time when he was on
the State Department's Terrorist Watch List.) He was then chauffeured to a mosque
in New Jersey, and began writing sermons for delivery in mosques in New Jersey and
Brooklyn. Within a few days, the mosque applied for a Green Card for the Sheik, as a
"Minister of Religion."
Sheik Omar's sermons were diatribes, replete with fiery references to "Satan
America" and "The American Whore." Americans were "infidels," and
Allah had decreed that all infidels should be put to death unless they converted to Islam.
Omar was plying his craft well. He was stirring up an Islamic jihad -- a holy war --
against America.
However, from his prison cell he has continued to direct Islamic terrorist cells in
America, and is likely to have played a role in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, the Sheik's defense lawyer and interpreter were charged with
assisting him in issuing fatwahs, or religious directives to U.S.-based mujahideen, to
engage in terrorist activities here between 1999 and 2001, from his prison cell in
Rochester, Minnesota.
He helped establish al-Jama'a al-Islamiya, a radical organization that was linked to the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat
The Blind Sheik found sanctuary first at the El Farouq mosque in Brooklyn and later at a
Jersey City mosque, Masjid Al Salaam |
