Manhattan Jury Begins Deliberations In Lynne Stewart Case

NEW YORK -- More than half a year after beginning its work, a federal jury on Wednesday started deliberating the fate of a Manhattan lawyer accused of assisting terrorists and lying to the government.

Attorney Lynne Stewart, 65, was charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, defrauding the government and lying to the government as she represented Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is serving a life prison sentence.

Prosecutors say Stewart conspired with Arabic interpreter Mohamed Yousry and postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar to spread Abdel-Rahman's deadly messages to followers in other countries despite U.S. government attempts to seal him off.

Abdel-Rahman, 67, was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to assassinate Egypt's president and to blow up New York landmarks, including the United Nations.

During their trial, all three defendants testified they had no intention to cause harm to others in their dealings with the sheik.

In reading the law to the jury Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl said motives were important. He noted that Stewart testified she never intended that her actions would assist a conspiracy and that Yousry "never envisioned that any of his actions would aid or bring about murder or kidnappings in a foreign country."

The judge said it might not matter that Stewart testified that she believed violence sometimes was necessary to overcome oppression.

"Expression of opinion alone," the judge said, "even an opinion advocating violence, is not a crime in this country."

He added that such advocacy becomes criminal only when someone uses it to incite or produce "imminent lawless action."

If convicted, Sattar could face up to life in prison. Yousry and Stewart could each face about 20 years in prison.

Evil Woman - Monday, September 23, 2002 10:15 PM
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I just returned from my trip East, which partly explains why this blog is a day late. It's a commentary on an article we ran yesterday, "Terrorist Lawyer," which originally appeared in the New York Times. (It's still available today, and can be found in "Recent Articles" on the left frame of the site). Like other members of the so-called "legal left," Lynne Stewart regards herself as a "revolutionary." Since America is a democracy, citizens who want to change our form of government -- even our Constitution -- have peaceful, legal means available to them by persuading a majority of their fellow citizens of the need to do so. Therefore, anyone who describes themselves as a "revolutionary" in a democracy like ours is in effect revealing at the very least their criminal intentions. Others should be forewarned about whom they are dealing with. Since American revolutionaries are aware that they can't persuade a majority to their viewpoint, they almost always wind up aligning themselves with foreign forces and governments, which are invariably totalitarian, and collaborate with them in their wars against the United States. This is stock history of the American "revolutionary" left. Thus their fundamental political orientation is treasonous even if they never technically commit a criminal act. The entire legal left -- the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Lawyers Guild and similar organizations can be described this way. Lynne Stewart's only distinction is that she got caught committing a criminal (and treasonous) act.

Progressives like Lynne Stewart are as a rule vacuous and pathetic people. The "movement," as she puts it "gives us a life." Ron Kuby, a "movement" attorney who like Stewart is a protege of Bill Kuntsler, the anti-American, racist, founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the author of the Times article: Movement lawyers "live vicariously through their clients [the words are those of the Times]. Movement lawyers identify especially with the people they represent." According to the Times article, Lynne Stewart, Ron Kuby and the lawyers for the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild -- "progressives" all -- have defended -- in addition to Muslim and Palestinian terrorists, American terrorists like Terry Nichols and the Weather Underground, "drug dealers, cop killers, mentally ill assassins," and other social predators -- all in the name of "social justice."

Most of these wretched activists are smart enough to lie whenever they are on public view. They pretend to be civil libertarians, Constitutionalists, advocates for the powerless and the despised. They never publicly admit to their own "revolutionary" agendas, their anti-Americanism, their hatred of white people and of Jews, their secret approval of criminal violence and their support for the agendas of the terrorists they defend. Lynne Stewart has had the bad judgment to be honest, and her friends are drawing back from her to protect themselves. Stewart told the Times that the Pentagon was a "better target" than the World Trade Center because the people in it were more easily identified as people deserving death. The people in the towers "never knew what hit them. They had no idea that they could ever be a target for somebody's wrath, just by virtue of being an American. They took it personally[!]. And actually it wasn't a personal thing[!]." It was just a political statement.

Lynne Stewart represents a domestic version -- an internal axis -- of the evil we are at war with internationally. Americans need to understand that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and their demented, hate-filled followers have allies in this country. The fifth column of sympathizers with our enemies who are actively abetting their attacks are more numerous now than they were during the Cold War. They are the enemy within. Lynne Stewart and her mentor Ramsey Clark, and lefty lawyers like Stewart's colleagues Ron Kuby, Stanley Cohen and Michael Tigar are the face of that enemy. Americans should be on guard against them.

http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/blog/BlogList.asp?D=&ID=&CP=58

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