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| Attorney Indicted for Aiding Terrorist Inmate |
| By USA Today |
| Published: 04/11/2002 |
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A New York lawyer and three others were indicted Tuesday on charges that they helped a convicted Egyptian terrorist communicate from prison with his followers worldwide. The indictment of Lynne Stewart, 63, along with three men, was announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft. Some criminal-defense lawyers denounced Stewart's arrest as an attempt to intimidate lawyers who challenge government prosecutions. A librarian and schoolteacher before she went to Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, Stewart has had clients ranging from members of the radical Weather Underground to mobster Salvatore ''Sammy the Bull'' Gravano. Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind cleric, is revered among radical Islamic followers as the leader of Islamic Group, an Egyptian extremist group identified by the United States as a terrorist organization. In 1995, he was sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to blow up several New York City landmarks. Since 1997, the federal Bureau of Prisons has imposed special restrictions on Abdel-Rahman's communications. Stewart is accused of violating prohibitions on his contact with the news media -- personally or through her. Ashcroft said that Abdel-Rahman will be the first federal inmate subjected to a 6-month-old Justice Department directive that allows the government to listen in on conversations that terrorism suspects have with their lawyers. ''We will not allow individuals to continue to perpetrate criminal acts or terrorist acts from their prison cells,'' Ashcroft said. ''And we will take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that that opportunity . . . is restrained.'' Stewart appeared in a Manhattan federal courtroom Tuesday to face charges that she conspired to provide material support to terrorists. Her arrest was met with outrage among other defense lawyers. ''It's very distressing when they start indicting the defense lawyers, especially defense lawyers who represent people who are so despised,'' Stanford law professor Barbara Allen Babcock said. Charged with Stewart were Arabic interpreter Mohammed Yousry and two alleged Abdel-Rahman followers: Ahmed Abdel Sattar of Staten Island and Yassir Al-Sirri, who is in custody in Great Britain. According to the indictment, Stewart ''allowed'' Yousry, during visits to a federal prison in Minnesota, to read letters to Abdel-Rahman from Sattar and other followers. Stewart made ''extraneous comments in English to mask the Arabic conversation'' between Abdel-Rahman and Yousry, the indictment said. After that meeting in May 2000, the indictment says, Stewart told the media that Abdel-Rahman had withdrawn his support for a cease-fire by the Islamic Group in its terrorist actions against the Egyptian government. She also is accused of making a false public statement about the quality of medical care Abdel-Rahman received in January 2001. Babcock suggested Ashcroft was searching for anyone to charge. ''There's a 'why now' feel to it, a sort of a public relations feel to it that's very creepy,'' she said. New York defense lawyer Ronald Kuby said the charges are a shot at defense lawyers. ''I'm sure this is an attempt by the government thinking that if it can attack the best of us, the rest of us will go along with the program,'' he said. Kuby, who has known Stewart for years, said she is ''absolutely fearless'' in defending her clients and makes no secret about her left-leaning beliefs. But, he said, ''she's not a terrorist.'' |
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