Stewart had been representing radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, who was serving a life sentence on terror charges.

On 9 April 2002, FBI agents came to Stewart's Brooklyn home and led her away in handcuffs. Agents also searched her Manhattan office and carried off files and computer records from her 30-year career as a defense attorney.

And on 10 February 2005, after a seven-month trial, Stewart was convicted of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, and defrauding the U.S. government.

Convicted along with Stewart in the current trial were her co-defendants-Ahmed Abdel Sattar, who had worked as a paralegal on the 1995 case involving Abdel Rahman, and Mohammed Yousry, the interpreter in the work with Abdel Rahman. Abdel Sattar faces a possible life sentence, and Yousry 20 years.

Stewart was immediately disbarred, prohibited from practicing law, although allowed to remain free on bond pending sentencing on 23 September.

Stewart says that she has simply done what any good attorney would do - provide a vigorous defence for her client.

The trail of Lynne Stewart has sent chills through the civil rights communities in the United States. An attorney being tried and punished for defending an unpopular client is seen as a major setback to due process and equal justice.

Write to Lynne:

Lynne Stewart - Messages can be sent to info@lynnestewart.org

Radical human rights attorney Lynne Stewart reviewed her own continuing legal struggle at a Workers World Party forum in New York on June 3. Stewart and her supporters charge that she has been falsely accused of "helping terrorists." She was convicted and faces a possible 30 years in prison at her Sept. 23 sentencing at the U.S. courthouse in downtown Manhattan.

The attorney’s defenders are working on both legal and popular challenges to her conviction. Their hope is to either get the case thrown out based on her First Amendment rights or to minimize the sentence to no actual jail time.

Specifically, Stewart was convicted for violating Special Administrative Measures (SAMS), imposed by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, by issuing a news release about her client Sheik Abdel-Rahman in 1995. There was a gag order on the case of her client. He had been convicted of planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

She explained that violating a SAMS is normally punished by refusing the attorney further contact with her client. In this case, the government used a conspiracy law to "bootstrap" the SAMS into criminal charges. Stewart spoke of the legitimate role of an attorney of "keeping your client alive in the media" to explain why she issued a news release for Abdel-Rahman.

The government’s goal with these charges was to intimidate attorneys from representing radical or revolutionary clients, Stewart said. But some lawyers have told Stewart that her struggle has inspired them to become active and aggressive defense attorneys.

Stewart has received much support from the progressive legal community and from the many left political activists who know what an important contribution she has made over her 27 years as an attorney.

She has represented, among other people, David Gilbert of the Weather Underground; Richard Williams of the United Freedom Front; Larry Davis, acquitted by reason of self-defense of the attempted murder of New York police officers; Sekou Odinga of the Black Liberation Army; and Nasser Ahmed, released after being imprisoned for over three years on non-existent "secret evidence."

On the web site for Stewart’s defense, lynnestewart.org, readers can find a list of her many upcoming speaking engagements, plans to demonstrate at her sentencing on Sept. 23, and details of a campaign to write letters asking for clemency to Manhattan federal Judge John Koetl by way of the defense committee. Readers can also get information by calling (212) 625-9696.

SOURCE: Workers World