Lynne Stewart, lawyer to blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, was sentenced to only 28 months today for passing messages from the terrorist to his followers.

NEW YORK – Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was sentenced Monday to 28 months in prison on a terrorism charge for helping a client who plotted to blow up New York City landmarks communicate with his followers.
Stewart, 67, could have faced up to 30 years in prison. She smiled as the judge announced his decision to send her to prison for less than 2 1/2 years.

“If you send her to prison, she’s going to die. It’s as simple as that,” defense lawyer Elizabeth Fink had told the judge before the sentence was pronounced.

Of course she smiled. She just got away with treason and will only spend 28 months in jail for it. Let’s remember what it is she’s done to get to this point:

Stewart has described the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an “armed struggle.” This is a reminder of exactly what she did to aid and abet jihad via Middle East Quarterly:

On February 10, 2005, another New York court found Stewart, now 66, as well as the sheikh’s court-appointed translator, Mohammad Yousry, 48, and his former paralegal, Ahmed Sattar, 46, guilty of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government for their part in enabling communications between the imprisoned sheikh and his network. Stewart and her coconspirators flouted their agreement with the Justice Department and helped the sheikh circumvent the communications ban. According to government recordings of their prison visits, Yousry, who also served as an adjunct lecturer in Middle East studies at York College of the City University of New York, conveyed messages to and from the sheikh while Stewart created what the prosecution called “covering noises.” On some surveillance videos, Stewart could be seen shaking a water jar or tapping on the table while Yousry and the sheikh exchanged communications that were then later disseminated to the sheikh’s followers via the former paralegal. The prosecutor argued, citing a letter written by the U.S. attorney’s office to Stewart after she delivered the message to Reuters, that it was not in the sheikh’s legal rights “to pass messages which, simply put, can get people killed and buildings blown up.” They argued that the case was equivalent to a “jail break,” in which the defendants extracted Abdel Rahman from prison, “not literally, of course, [but] figuratively, in order to make him available to other terrorists.”

One of the most incendiary communications was a message Stewart herself gave to the Reuters news service in June 2000 in which the sheikh announced his withdrawal of support for a cease-fire between the Egyptian Islamic Group and the Egyptian government. The truce had been in place since 1997, just after his followers in Egypt had opened fire on tourists at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, killing 58 foreigners and 4 Egyptians. Subsequently, high-casualty Islamist terrorism resumed in Egypt on October 7, 2004, with a series of bombings that killed 34 in and around the Egyptian Sinai resort of Taba. On July 23, 2005, three bombs exploded in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing at least 64.

Government investigators searching Stewart’s law offices found a draft of the sheikh’s fatwa that bin Laden later said inspired him. In it, Abdel Rahman enjoined his fellow Muslims everywhere to kill Americans, even children, “to treat them with brutality,” and to “drown their ships, shoot down their airplanes, kill them on earth, in the sea or in the sky, kill them everywhere you find them” in order to obtain his release from U.S. prison.

The jury also found Sattar guilty of additional charges of conspiracy to kidnap and murder. In this case, he ghostwrote and issued a fatwa under the sheikh’s name in which he urged Muslims to kill Jews and their supporters. He also recruited a terrorist, at the time a fugitive in Egypt, in order to carry out the fatwa. Sattar, who has been held without bail since his arrest, faces life imprisonment.

You’d think that we could all agree that this person is a traitor, and should be locked up for as long as possible. You’d be wrong. From the Lynne Stewart Website:

Radical human rights attorney Lynne Stewart has been falsely accused of helping terrorists. Now convicted, she faces 30 years in prison. On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, she was arrested and agents searched her Manhattan office for documents. She was arraigned before Manhattan federal Judge John Koeltl. This is an obvious attempt by the U.S. government to silence dissent, curtail vigorous defense lawyers, and install fear in those who would fight against the U.S. government’s racism, seek to help Arabs and Muslims being prosecuted for free speech and defend the rights of all oppressed people.

But don’t take their word for it, just ask Ms. Stewart herself:

I inadvertently allowed those with other agendas to corrupt the most precious and inviolate basis of our profession – the attorney-client relationship. The acts in violation of my SAMs affirmation – speaking to a reporter and allowing prohibited communications – were committed intentionally. My only motive however was to serve my client as his lawyer. What might have been legitimately tolerated in 200 – 2001, was after 9/11, interpreted differently and considered criminal. At the time I didn’t see this. I see and understand it now.

Emphasis mine

So she admits she did it intentionally, she admits that, in hindsight, it was wrong, but because she did it to serve her client she thinks she should get off. Uh, okay…

Next, she goes into a diatribe about how all of her clients are troubled people and it takes all of her time and energy as lawyer to represent them, which therefore caused her to slip up and commit these crimes. Then she blames the government (you knew it was coming, didn’t you?) for discouraging zealous advocacy by defense counsel. The letter to the judge she wrote goes on like this for nine pages.

The fact of the matter is that what she did had absolutely nothing to do with the defense of her client. There is no rational explanation that ties her passing on forbidden communications from her client to the outside world with the “zealous” defense of her client. She’s in jail because of her intentional attempts to bring harm to the American people. She is exactly where she belongs, but she should be there for thirty years, not 28 months.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 4:06 pm by Nick, and is filed under Courts, Culture War, Law, Politics, War on Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.