Convicted Lawyer Faces Prison Sentence

[Marie26]

NEW YORK — Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart admits she zealously tried to save a blind Egyptian sheik from prison. Now a judge will determine whether she should join her former client behind bars.

Prosecutors are asking that the 67-year-old lawyer be given the maximum sentence of 30 years in prison for enabling Omar Abdel-Rahman to communicate with followers despite demands that he be isolated from the world. Her sentencing hearing was set for Monday. ...

"The government's characterization of me and what occurred is inaccurate and untrue," she wrote. "It takes unfair advantage of the climate of urgency and hysteria that followed 9/11 and that was re-lived during the trial. I did not intentionally enter into any plot or conspiracy to aid a terrorist organization."

Koeltl already has upheld Stewart's 2005 conviction, rejecting Stewart's claim that Abdel-Rahman was engaging in protected speech when he expressed his opinion about a cease fire by Islamic militants in Egypt that Stewart passed along in a 2000 press release. Prosecutors agreed with a U.S. Probation Department pre-sentencing report that recommended Stewart serve the maximum possible sentence of 30 years.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4261713.html

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. I heard this on NPR

this morning. It makes me sick to my stomach and makes me ashamed to be an american. It seems to me that she is being persecuted because she is a self confessed "flaming liberal". This kind of thing in my american SICKENS me.

[hughee99]

2. It seems to me that she is being prosecuted

because she was passing messages from her client, who was convicted of plotting to bomb the WTC in '93 and plotting to kill the Egypt's president, to his followers. I don't think she intentionally was trying to aid terrorists or anything, but it sounds like she had a clear understanding of her responsibilities here, and chose not to follow them. If she felt that what was being asked of her was illegal or unconstitutional, she should have challenged it in court BEFORE passing along these messages. Just my 2 cents, anyway. I think a 30 year sentence is ridiculous, but I don't think she's doing the right thing here, either.

[warrens]

11. That's the way I read it, Hughee. NT

[Ex Lion Tamer]

3. I also heard the NPR piece, but I'm not sure I agree with you.

She actually admitted in the interview that she had behaved inappropriately.

The problem is that neither the NPR piece nor the articled linked in the original post give any good detail about what information she conveyed. If it was just something like, "The Sheik is for the cease fire," then she was wrong; but how does that justify 30 years? On the other hand, if she conveyed something inflammatory, then perhaps there is some proportionality.

I have no idea. Does anybody?

[winter999]

4. From what I've read

she passed along a message that was exactly opposite of what you mentioned. The message she passed along was the Sheik was supporting a fatwah that condoned violence in Egypt. Within days there was the bombings in Egypt that killed 34.

[Ex Lion Tamer]

6. That's pretty egregious, then.

As much as I dislike this government, this doesn't look like a witch hunt to me. Pretty stupid on her part.

[Taoschick]

9. It was stupid

And she's admitted she was wrong. I don't think a 30 year sentence is justified in this case. Pull her license, give her a suspended sentence and probation.

[The Stranger]

12. It is a complete fucking witch hunt -- only totalitarian gov'ts do this.

[pberq]

5. Check out this interview on Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/16/143257

. . .LYNNE STEWART: Yes. You know, the government has put in what my dear friend Bill Kunstler used to call “weasel words,” words that don’t state the exact facts but really pull a kind of reaction. So they use words like “smuggled out messages.” We would visit the Sheik. He would tell us, he would dictate to us letters. He would dictate to us press releases.

The real thrust of my conviction is that I made a press release very openly to Reuters, no secret, nothing under the bra straps, and that press release called for a reconsideration, not an end to the ceasefire, but a reconsideration of a unilateral ceasefire that the Sheik's group, which he of course had not been a member of for ten years at the time he made the release, had made in Egypt. Ramsey Clark had announced his original position, which was in support of the ceasefire. Ramsey Clark never heard from the government at all. I made the press release saying, “I think you should reconsider this ceasefire,” and a year-and-a-half later, I was indicted.

AMY GOODMAN: You have written a letter to the judge. Explain this letter.

LYNNE STEWART: Yes. I’m afraid that if you only read the New York Times, you may get the wrong impression. It’s not a craven, begging letter. I am still very sure of my principled stand in this whole matter, that everything I did, I did as a lawyer, that I never intended to aid my client's cause. I intended to aid this man, this man who was in terrible isolation.

(more at link . . .)

[Up2Late]

7. This is outragious! Total BS.

Here's the link to todays NPR story: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6275377>

Lawyer Faces Sentencing for Aiding Terrorists

Listen to this story...(at link above)
by Margot Adler

Morning Edition, October 16, 2006 · Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart will be sentenced
in New York for aiding terrorists. Stewart was convicted last year
of allowing her imprisoned client, the blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman,
to communicate with his followers by giving a press release to Reuters.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

8. They are trying to go after the Gitmo attorneys too - very scary.

n/t

[INDIA]

10. She got 28 months. CNN right now. n/t

[snot]

13. The govt purported to impose special rules prohibiting her & her client

from exercising their First Amdt freedoms. They said she couldn't talk to the press because she might be passing secret messages. The govt basically just didn't want this life-long civil rights advocate revealing to the press that the govt's case was a bunch of b.s. I've never heard there was any proof that there actually were any secret messages.

If you get the chance, see this:
Untitled Video on Lynne Stewart, and Her Conviction, the Law, and Poetry, by Paul Chan (2006) 17:30 min. Near the end, she quotes a wonderful the last poem Brecht wrote:  "And I always thought the very simplest words must be enough./  When I say what things are like, everyone's heart must be torn to shreds:/  That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself.  Surely you see that."

[Taoschick]

14. The messages weren't secret

She was very in your face about it. She wasn't a dupe, she willingly passed info to Omar Abdel-Rahman's supporters. She aided him in getting his orders out to his followers from behind bars.

How anyone here could possibly support that is beyond my comprehension.

[robcon]

15. Stewart pissed on what she knew her duties to the court were.

She should be sent to jail. It wasn't a casual breaking of rules. It was a conscious spreading of the message by Stewart that the sheik's followers should erupt violently.

[humbled_opinion]

16. I think all things need to be taken in perspective.

Seen through the prism of 911 should not be the norm