The Intolerable Conviction of Lynne Stewart
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Revolutionary Worker #1268, February
20, 2005, posted at rwor.org
"I see myself as being a symbol of what the people rail
against when they say our civil liberties are eroded. This case
could be, I hope it will be, a wakeup call to all of the citizens
of this country and all of the people who live here that you
can’t lock up the lawyers. You can’t tell the lawyers
how to do their job. You’ve got to let them operate. And I
will fight on. I am not giving up. I know I commited no crime. I
know what I did was right."Attorney Lynne
Stewart, after her Feb. 10 conviction on felony charges
In April 2002, then U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft personally
announced to the news media that the government had indicted radical
civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart on serious charges of
"conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists and
defrauding the U.S. government."
 <blockquote>
   <p>"I see myself as being a symbol of what the people rail
   against when they say our civil liberties are eroded. This case
   could be, I hope it will be, a wakeup call to all of the citizens
   of this country and all of the people who live here that you
   can’t lock up the lawyers. You can’t tell the lawyers
   how to do their job. You’ve got to let them operate. And I
   will fight on. I am not giving up. I know I commited no crime. I
   know what I did was right."</p>
 <p class="quotesource">Attorney Lynne
 Stewart, after her Feb. 10 conviction on felony charges</p>
 </blockquote>
 <p>In April 2002, then U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft personally
 announced to the news media that the government had indicted radical
 civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart on serious charges of
 "conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists and
 defrauding the U.S. government."</p>
 <p>Almost three years later, on February 10, Ashcroft’s
 successor—Alberto Gonzales—spoke to the national media to
 hail the conviction of Lynne Stewart on all five counts that she
 faced.</p>
 <p>The extraordinary attention focused on this case by Ashcroft and
 Gonzalez points to the stakes involved—and the stakes are very
 high. The conviction of Lynne Stewart is <em>very bad</em> —for
 defense lawyers, for those who oppose this government, and for the
 people generally.</p>
 <p>The government set its sights on Stewart because of her determined
 work as a defense attorney for her client, fundamentalist Islamic
 cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted and sentenced to life in
 1996 for seditious conspiracy related to alleged plots to attack New
 York landmarks. But as the National Lawyers Guild said after the
 verdict, this case was "an attack not only on our cherished
 colleague and fellow NLG member but also on all members of the legal
 community who represent unpopular clients and causes."</p>
 <p>Defense attorney Ron Kuby said, "It’s a dark day for
 civil liberties and for civil liberties lawyers in this country. In
 the post 9/11 era, where dissidents are treated as traitors,
 it’s perhaps no surprise that a zealous civil rights lawyer
 becomes a convict."</p>
 <p>Carl Dix, national spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist
 Party, said: "Lynne Stewart’s actual ‘crime’
 was aggressively defending a client who was on the wrong side of the
 U.S.’s ‘war on terrorism.’ Her conviction
 underlines the ugly reality the rulers are determined to
 create—one where any opposition to their aims has been
 criminalized. This represents a dangerous legal precedent that must
 be opposed."</p>
 <p style="text-align: center">****</p>
 <p>The guilty verdict on Lynne Stewart came after a seven-month trial
 and 12 days of deliberation by the jury. The same jury also came out
 with guilty verdicts on all charges against Mohammed Yousry (a
 translator for Rahman) and Ahmed Abdel Sattar (a paralegal).</p>
 <p>Stewart, who is 65 years old, faces a possible maximum sentence of
 45 years.</p>
 <p>The government alleged that Stewart helped to communicate a
 message from Rahman to his organization in Egypt, the Islamic
 Group—by passing on a press release expressing his opposition
 to a ceasefire with the Egyptian regime. The government claims that
 this violated the "Special Administrative Measures" (SAMs)
 against Rahman. SAMs severely limit the ability of certain federal
 prisoners to communicate with the outside world.</p>
 <p>The <em>New York Times</em> noted, "The government never
 showed that any violence resulted from the defendants’ actions.
 The Islamic Group never canceled the ceasefire. The defendants were
 not accused of terrorism in the United States." The judge
 himself told the jury that bin Laden and al-Qaida were not at issue.
 But the prosecution blatantly tried to pin a "terrorist"
 label on Stewart—for example, by showing videotapes of Osama
 bin Laden in the courtroom.</p>
 <p>As Lynne Stewart pointed out, "If you mention Osama bin
 Laden’s name, you don’t have to present any evidence. You
 can tell the jury that he has nothing to do with the case, but
 there’s been this discourse, this drumbeat, that makes it very
 difficult for our voice to be heard."</p>
 <p>Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been on a fascistic
 offensive against the rights of the people. Such things as the right
 to an attorney and attorney-client privilege that have been cosidered
 established principles of this legal system are being undercut and
 undermined. And the government’s trial of Lynne Stewart is part
 of this reactionary offensive.</p>
 <p>The hundreds of exhibits presented by the prosecution in the trial
 consisted largely of secret government surveillance of Mohammed
 Sattar’s communications—"telephone calls, monitoring
 his Internet usage and his e- mail account and his fax machine."
 This spying operation was then used as an excuse to extend the secret
 surveillance to Lynne Stewart’s meetings with her client.</p>
 <p>There is an Orwellian quality to all this. One of the
 government’s accusations against Stewart is that she tried to
 distract the guards so that others could communicate secretly with
 Rahman. How do they supposedly know this? Because, they say, they
 were <em>videotaping</em> the meetings between Stewart and her
 client.</p>
 <p>In an article on the Counterpunch website, legal scholar Jennifer
 Van Bergen wrote, "The words she spoke to her client were meant
 for her client alone and the one who has violated rights here is the
 Department of Justice. They violated something so sacred that it can
 hardly be spoken without somehow losing the value of it: they
 violated the attorney/client privilege. The DOJ violated this
 privilege by listening in on her conversations with her client, which
 they then took out of context and tried to make into a monstrous
 thing. But is anyone prosecuting them for this violation?
 No."</p>
 <p>In response to the government charges that she violated the
 Special Administrative Measures against Rahman, Stewart has insisted
 that her obligations as a defense attorney were what she considered
 of primary importance.</p>
 <p>Stewart told the radio program <em>Democracy Now</em> the day
 after her conviction: "We thought about this for a while before
 we made the press release [on Rahman’s views on the ceasefire],
 and it was considered that it was important to him, considered
 important to our handling of the case, that this press release be
 made to keep him a figure on the world stage. If we had lost that, we
 would not have had any bargaining power, we would not be able to do
 anything that would move him from this really torturous situation in
 which he was being held—a blind, sick man who did not speak any
 English. These prison regulations, these SAMs, said, you know,
 ‘If you break these regulations, you may be cut off from your
 client.’ That was our greatest concern, that we would be cut
 off from the client. The idea of prosecution never entered our minds.
 But the fact of the matter is, even with what has happened, it was
 the right decision. You can’t start saying, ‘Well, maybe
 I will do this, but I won’t do that.’ It has to be that,
 within the rules of ethics, what vigorously and zealously defending a
 client means. You carry through on it, and you do so
 wholeheartedly."</p>
 <p>Also on <em>Democracy Now</em> , Stewart’s attorney, Michael
 Tigar, pointed to further implications of such government
 restrictions on prisoner communications: "The only way that we
 will ever get to the bottom of the American concentration camp abuses
 at Gitmo [the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo, Cuba] and
 Abu Ghraib is that if lawyers for these prisoners are permitted to
 tell their stories to the world. If the government can shut off that
 communication, which they have attempted to do over and over and over
 again, these activities will continue in secret— blessed as
 they are by the highest officials of government in a country which
 has for the first time in its history given a cabinet job to a fellow
 [referring to Alberto Gonzales—<em>RW</em>] who says that the
 Geneva Convention is obsolete."</p>
 <p style="text-align: center">****</p>
 <p>Because of her conviction on felony charges, Lynne Stewart was
 immediately disbarred, or deprived of her status as an attorney. She
 told <em>Democracy Now</em> , "That is my greatest sense of
 loss—that I will be cut off from this profession that I love
 and that I feel I have served—and I have served people who had
 no voice."</p>
 <p>The conviction of Lynne Stewart is sending reverberations through
 the entire legal community. Criminal defense lawyer Jed Stone said,
 "This verdict is a chilling attack on criminal defense lawyers.
 The government is telling us, ‘Don’t get involved in
 cases of people alleged to be terrorists. If you do, you will pay a
 heavy cost.’ Whatever you think of the individual or the
 allegations, just like everyone, these people need a defense lawyer,
 perhaps even more so. But the government doesn’t want lawyers
 to handle those kinds of cases."</p>
 <p>In the face of this "chilling attack," some are stepping
 back, even saying that Lynne Stewart may have "crossed the
 line." Others are taking a principled stand of supporting
 Stewart and condemning the conviction.</p>
 <p>Defense lawyer Stanley Cohen said, "I don’t think that
 there’s a political lawyer in this country who doesn’t
 believe that the government has a plan to target the lawyers who do
 what we do and to silence us. If anything, it [Stewart’s
 conviction] will make us more determined."</p>
 <p>A statement issued by the National Lawyers Guild on February 10
 quotes Guild President Michael Avery: "The U.S. Department of
 Justice was resolute from day one in making a symbol out of Lynne
 Stewart in support of its campaign to deny people charged with crimes
 of effective legal representation. The government is bent on
 intimidating attorneys from providing zealous representation to
 unpopular clients. The National Lawyers Guild strongly urges its own
 members and other defense lawyers to continue to proudly represent
 clients who are openly critical of government policies. We will not
 be intimidated and this prosecution has only strengthened our resolve
 to oppose the repressive attacks this government has made on the
 civil liberties of everyone in this country. We will also continue to
 stand by Lynne Stewart."</p>
 <p>The National Lawyer’s Guild has called for a National Day of
 Outrage in response to the Lynne Stewart verdict for Thursday,
 February 17.</p>
 <hr style="text-align: left" width="60%" />
   <h4>Online resources:</h4>
<ul>
   <li><a href="lynnestewart.org">http://www.lynnestewart.org">lynnestewart.org</a>
   (updates on the case)</li>
   <li><a href="nlg.org">http://www.nlg.org">nlg.org</a> (National Lawyers
   Guild website)</li>
   <li><a href="../../s/elect.htm#stewart">rwor.org</a> (background
   on Lynne Stewart case)</li>
</ul>
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