NEW YORK - A judge is to decide Monday whether to send a civil rights
lawyer to prison for what could be the rest of her life for allegedly allowing
an Egyptian sheik convicted in a terror plot to communicate with his followers.
Lynne Stewart, who has cancer, is asking the judge to be lenient and see her
as a well-intentioned attorney who made a serious mistake.
Prosecutors want Stewart, 67, to receive the maximum sentence of 30 years in
prison.
US District Judge John G. Koeltl is to sentence Stewart and two
co-defendants Monday for a scheme the government says enabled a jailed blind
Egyptian sheik to communicate with followers despite demands that he be isolated
from the world.
Stewart was convicted in February 2005 of providing material support to
terrorists for releasing a statement by Omar Abdel-Rahman, a sheik sentenced to
life after he was convicted in plots to blow up five New York landmarks and
assassinate Egypt's president.
Stewart, who represented the sheik at his 1995 trial, was diagnosed with
breast cancer last year, and her sentencing has been delayed while she underwent
treatment.
Stewart was arrested six months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks, along with Mohamed Yousry, an Arabic interpreter, and Ahmed Abdel
Sattar, a US postal worker.
In a letter to the judge, Stewart asked for mercy.
"I am not a traitor," she wrote. "The government's characterization of me and
what occurred in inaccurate and untrue. It takes unfair advantage of the climate
of urgency and hysteria that followed 9/11 and that was re-lived during the
trial. I did not intentionally enter into any plot or conspiracy to aid a
terrorist organization."
Koeltl already has upheld the jury verdict, rejecting Stewart's claim that
Abdel-Rahman was engaging in protected speech when he expressed his opinion
about a cease fire by Islamic militants in Egypt that Stewart passed along in a
2000 press release.
Prosecutors see the case in stark terms, telling the judge in a
pre-sentencing document that Stewart's "egregious, flagrant abuse of her
profession, abuse that amounted to material support to a terrorist group,
deserves to be severely punished."
They agreed with a US Probation Department pre-sentencing report that
recommended Stewart serve the maximum sentence.
Lawyer Elizabeth Fink wrote to the judge on Stewart's behalf, calling the
government's position "draconian, inhumane and ludicrous."
Yousry and Stewart, both convicted of providing material support to
terrorists, face up to 30 years in prison. Sattar, convicted of conspiracy to
kill and kidnap people in a foreign country, could face life in prison.
Besides the material support conviction, Stewart also was convicted of
defrauding the government and making false statements for breaking her promise
to abide by special rules the government imposed on the sheik to prevent him
from communicating with his followers.
