The Real Lynne Stewart

Precious few people know that Lynne Stewart represented Sheik Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, who was imprisoned after being convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks. Even fewer know about her beliefs. I'm about to change all that. Let's first take a look at a motion filed by the U.S. Attorney in Stewart's case:

Stewart's "egregious, flagrant abuse of her profession, abuse that amounted to material support to a terrorist group, deserves to be severely punished," prosecutors wrote in a document submitted Thursday to a judge.

Her lawyers have argued that Stewart should receive no prison time, arguing that a harsh sentence would frighten other lawyers from representing notorious clients and that Stewart's three decades of distinguished work for indigent clients should speak louder than a single serious mistake.

The prosecutors see it differently.

"Stewart did not walk a fine line of zealous advocacy and accidentally fall over it; she marched across it and into a criminal conspiracy," Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Dember wrote. "The government obviously did not prosecute Stewart because she is a zealous advocate, but rather for blatantly and repeatedly violating the law."

Dember wrote that Stewart's "conduct was not isolated to one single event; rather, it showed a pattern of purposeful and willful conduct, in which she played a central role in repeated fraudulent attempts to pass messages to and from Abdel-Rahman."

The defense motion isn't going anywhere but in the trash hopper. As the U.S. Attorney's office said, it's not like Lynne Stewart tip-toed up to the line, then backed away from it. If there's any doubt about Stewart's motivation in representing abdel-Rahman, aka the Blind Sheikh, here's a clue into Ms. Stewart's motivation:

The entities the Tides Foundation has chosen to fund are overwhelmingly leftwing. The so-called "legal left" (its own referent) has been a prime beneficiary of Tides largesse. One of its principal beneficiaries, for example, is the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which began as a Communist front organization and remains proud of its lineage. Its national convention in October 2003 featured a keynote address from Lynne Stewart, a lawyer specializing in defending terrorists who has been indicted by the Justice Department for providing "material support" to sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, whose organization, known as the Islamic Group, bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand.

Stewart is on record supporting terrorism against defenders of "capitalism" and "racism." "I don't believe in anarchist violence but in directed violence," she told the New York Times in 1995. "That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions and accompanied by popular support." In her National Lawyers Guild keynote address, Stewart said she and her NLG comrades were carrying on a proud tradition of their forebears, past and present:

"And modern heroes, dare I mention? Ho and Mao and Lenin, Fidel and Nelson Mandela and John Brown, Che Guevara, Our quests like theirs are to shake the very foundations of the continents."

Based just on the information that the AP didn't include in their article, doesn't it sound like Ms. Stewart isn't a "zealous advocate" for her clients but is instead am advocate of violence against anything American? Why shouldn't we think of Ms. Stewart as America's enemy? Anyone who's quoted in the NY Times as advocating "directed violence at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism" must by definition be America's enemy.

That isn't all I found out about Lynne Stewart:

Stewart was indicted for alleged criminal activity in April 2002. She was accused of providing material aid to a foreign terrorist organization, making false statements, and conspiracy to defraud the federal government. All the allegations stemmed from an apparent violation of Special Administrative Measures to which Abdel Rahman and his counsel were subject.

These measures, which Stewart had accepted in writing in order to be allowed to meet with Abdel Rahman in prison, provided that she would not "use [their] meetings, correspondence, or phone calls with Abdel Rahman to pass messages between third parties (including, but not limited to, the media) and Abdel Rahman". The material support charges were dismissed in the summer of 2003, but, in November 2003, Stewart was re-indicted on charges of material support to a murder conspiracy, of which she was ultimately convicted.

Stewart was accused of using her meetings with Abdel Rahman to facilitate communications between Abdel Rahman and members of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group, in English), an Egyptian organization classified as a terrorist group by the Department of State. Stewart was alleged to have allowed her Arabic translator and co-defendant, Mohammed Yousry, to use her meetings with Abdel Rahman to receive communications for passing to followers. She was also charged with releasing her client's press conference statements, which declared his renewal of support for Al-Gama'a's cease-fire against the Egyptian government.

In other words, Stewart was convicted for her part in a murder conspiracy by acting as a conduit for arranging a murder. It's infuriating that her attorneys wasted the court's time by petitioning that she wouldn't get any jail time for her part in that murder.

Check out this section of the AP article:

Her lawyers have argued that Stewart should receive no prison time, arguing that a harsh sentence would frighten other lawyers from representing notorious clients and that Stewart's three decades of distinguished work for indigent clients should speak louder than a single serious mistake.

The whole idea of making an example out of Stewart isn't to discourage lawyers from "representing notorious clients"; it's to tell attorneys that they'll be vigorously prosecuted if they willfully assist their client in commiting a felony. I'd hope that that's precisely the type of 'chilling effect' our courts would have.

By the way, the Tides Foundation is generously supported by George Soros & Theresa Heinz Kerry. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

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Posted Tuesday, September 5, 2006 12:27 PM

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