In addition to striking a blow against the right of the accused to a full legal defense, Washington also took advantage of the “terrorism” charges in the case to take swipes at freedom of the press and academic freedom by issuing subpoenas to reporters who interviewed Stewart and using academic research materials as “evidence.”

Stewart, 65, was convicted February 10 on all five charges against her of “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorist activity” and “defrauding” the government after a seven-month trial in federal court here. U.S. District Judge John Koeltl has set September 23 for sentencing. Stewart said she faces up to 30 years in prison, and that although her case is unprecedented, guidelines in such cases suggested an 18-year sentence. Upon her conviction, she was immediately disbarred.

“We are appealing to people across the country to write letters to the judge, calling on him to use the ‘discretion’ allowed him to order probation or community service rather than a prison term,” said Stewart. She pointed to the January 2005 Supreme Court rulings in Booker and FanFan that struck down mandatory sentencing, and suggested supporters note her 30 years of service to the community, and her age and health, in their letters to the judge.

The letter-writing campaign to Judge Koeltl, calling on him to sentence Stewart to no time in prison, is aimed at weakening the impact of the guilty verdict. “In this way the judge would send a message: this is not the kind of case for punishment. I am not a ‘danger’ and should not be sentenced to jail time,” she said.

Following the conviction the judge restricted Stewart’s travel to three districts in New York State, she said. Invitations soon began to come to speak across the country and Stewart requested permission to leave the state to speak on her case. Over the government’s objections, she said, the judge approved her travel to San Francisco and Boston in order to accept invitations there. She plans to seek approval for further travel to continue her fight.

Stewart spoke at 16 engagements in five days while in the San Francisco Bay Area in late April. The events were organized by campus and peace groups, and community and political organizations. She said highlights of the trip to the Bay Area included an April 23 program attended by 400 on the occasion of the birthday of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black rights activist and journalist who was framed up in 1981 on charges of murdering a Philadelphia cop and remains behind bars in Pennsylvania. Abu-Jamal then interviewed Stewart for his radio program. She is scheduled to speak in the Boston area May 20-21.  
 
‘Conspiracy’ charges
The prosecutors’ case against Stewart focused on her activities as an attorney in defense of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who she represented from 1994 to 2002. Abdel-Rahman, a Muslim cleric, was convicted on frame-up charges of conspiracy to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993 and attack other city landmarks. In 1996 he was sentenced to life in prison plus 65 years.

“The charges against me center on two separate ‘conspiracies’ that are rooted in Department of Justice Special Administrative Measures (SAMs),” said Stewart. “I was not found guilty of breaking any law, but of violating these regulations.” Washington imposed SAMs on Abdel-Rahman that include restrictions on his access to mail, telephones, and visitors, and a prohibition on his speaking to the media.

At the heart of the government’s case is the fact that Stewart released a statement to the press from Abdel-Rahman in June 2000 in which she stated his decision to withdraw support for a cease-fire between the Egyptian government and the organization he led, the Islamic Group. “This was not an ‘instruction from the commander-in-chief’” to carry out any action, she said, and in fact the government never claimed that any act of “terrorism” occurred as a result of the press conference.

“The first charge is conspiracy to ‘defraud’ the government. The prosecutors claimed that when I signed on to the SAMs I did so with the intention of violating them,” said Stewart. “The second charge was that I ‘conspired’ with my co-defendants to ‘conspire’ to provide material aid to ‘terrorism.’” The judge rejected her defense attorneys’ objection that there is no such crime as “conspiring to conspire.”

She noted that by charging her with plotting conspiracies, the government neither had to prove that she had actually carried out a specific “terrorist” act, nor aided someone else in doing so.

Much of the “evidence” against Stewart was based on government wiretaps of more than two years of conversations between her and Abdel-Rahman, her client, and videotapes of their meetings in prison. Since October 2001 the Justice Department has had the authority to conduct surveillance of prisoners with their attorneys without judicial oversight. At a pretrial hearing, a prosecutor acknowledged that “intercepted calls are the backbone of the government’s case.” The Justice Department had obtained a secret warrant through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to snoop on her prison visits with Abdel-Rahman.  
 
Attack on academic, press freedom
The jury also found Stewart’s co-defendants guilty on all counts. Mohammed Yousry, an Arabic translator, faces up to 20 years in prison for “providing material support to terrorists.” Abdel-Sattar, a paralegal for Abdel-Rahman, was convicted of “conspiracy” to “kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country.”

In its prosecution of Yousry, the government relied heavily on the fact that he had been writing a dissertation on Abdel-Rahman at New York University (NYU), said Stewart. Yousry’s colleagues in the Middle East Studies department stood by him in this attack on academic freedom. His dissertation chief testified at the trial as to why a researcher on the subject would have large numbers of documents on Abdel-Rahman, said Stewart, and after the trial six professors in his department wrote a letter to the New York Times protesting the government’s introduction of research materials as evidence of “terrorism.” The Times refused to publish the letter.

In the course of the attack on Stewart, the prosecutors also tried to strike a blow at freedom of the press. When the trial began in June 2004 the government issued subpoenas to four reporters to testify in order to use their coverage of Stewart’s activities as an attorney against her. All four challenged the validity of the government move.

At the pretrial hearing prosecutor Anthony Barkow claimed the reporters’ interviews with Stewart would prove that her stated support for revolutionary movements laid the basis for her “providing material support for terrorism.”

Newspaper articles alone cannot be used as evidence because they are regarded as hearsay. The government was trying to force the reporters to affirm the quotations in their articles in order to establish that Stewart’s supports “violence” and “terrorism.”

At the time the judge left the subpoenas in place, and reserved the right to rule on their validity until later in the trial. The trial ended without a ruling on this matter by the judge.

The government’s violence-baiting of Stewart was key to its case. In response to this charge, she said her views were “more in line with Nelson Mandela than with Gandhi. In wars of national liberation or for self-determination, where the powers-that-be are using violence, violence in self-defense is legitimate.” She said her views on this question were irrelevant, however, as “they don’t have anything to do with the way I practice law,” but at trial the judge ruled this admissible because it went to her “state of mind.”

Stewart said the government attack on her rights as an attorney is similar to the restrictions Washington has put on lawyers for those it holds as “enemy combatants” in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. “Their lawyers are required to sign on to restrictions to what they can say and must pass a security clearance,” she said, and may not reveal the names of their clients or the conditions under which they are imprisoned.

Letters to Judge John Koeltl should be sent to Stewart’s attorney, Jill R. Shellow-Lavine, at 2537 Post Road, Southport, CT 06890. She will then deliver them to the judge. For more information, contact the defense committee’s web site at www.lynnestewart.org.  
 
 
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