Lynne Stewart was sent to prison
today. People throughout the United States and around the world recognize
this as a great miscarriage of justice.
Her indictment was an outrage.
So too was her conviction. The fact that this seventy year old veteran
civil rights attorney has been sent to prison is a crime itself. She
is serving a 28 month sentence although the Court of Appeals has remanded
her case back to the original trial court with the hope that her sentenced
will be lengthened. The Bush Justice Department had sought a 30 year
sentence.
“Lynne Stewart should be
set free,” stated Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER
Coalition. “Her conviction is part of an-going war against civil rights
and particularly against the Arab-American and Muslim community. With
her jailing the government is sending a definite and chilling message
to all the attorneys in this country – ‘do not represent Arab people
and or Muslims.’ In recent weeks the government has seized mosques
in the United States at the same time as they have implanted agent provocateurs
and set up sting operations and carried out FBI assassinations targeting
the American Muslim community and its leaders.”
The ANSWER Coalition is planning
major actions protesting the Afghanistan and Iraq war on Saturday March
20. We will also be demanding an end the persecution and repression
of the Arab and Muslim communities. Lynne Stewart has marched with us
and spoken at these major protests in past years. In spite of the threat
of prison hanging over her, Lynne Stewart always marched in defense
others especially the Iraqi, Afghan and Palestinian people.
On this March 20, 2010 people
marching together will now also demand Free Lynne Stewart!
Lynne Stewart
in her own words
The following is excerpted
from an interview that Lynne Stewart did with Pacifica’s Democracy
Now just prior to her imprisonment. She explains key features of her
case.
LYNNE STEWART:
I represented Sheikh Omar at trial—that was in 1995—along with Ramsey
Clark and Abdeen Jabara. I was lead trial counsel. He was convicted
in September of ’95, sentenced to a life prison plus a hundred years,
or some sort—one of the usual outlandish sentences. We continued,
all three of us, to visit him while he was in jail—he was a political
client; that means that he is targeted by the government—and because
it is so important to prisoners to be able to have access to their lawyers.
Sometime in 1998, I think maybe
it was, they imposed severe restrictions on him. That is, his ability
to communicate with the outside world, to have interviews, to be able
to even call his family, was limited by something called special administrative
measures. The lawyers were asked to sign on for these special administrative
measures and warned that if these measures were not adhered to, they
could indeed lose contact with their client—in other words, be removed
from his case.
In 2000, I visited the sheikh,
and he asked me to make a press release. This press release had to do
with the current status of an organization that at that point was basically
defunct, the Gama’a al-Islamiyya. And I agreed to do that. In May
of—maybe it was later than that. Sometime in 2000, I made the press
release.
Interestingly enough, we found
out later that the Clinton administration, under Janet Reno, had the
option to prosecute me, and they declined to do so, based on the notion
that without lawyers like me or the late Bill Kunstler or many that
I could name, the cause of justice is not well served. They need the
gadflies.
So, at any rate, they made
me sign onto the agreement again not to do this. They did not stop me
from representing him. I continued to represent him.
And it was only after 9/11,
in April of 2002, that John Ashcroft came to New York, announced the
indictment of me, my paralegal and the interpreter for the case, on
grounds of materially aiding a terrorist organization. One of the footnotes
to the case, of course, is that Ashcroft also appeared on nationwide
television with Letterman that night ballyhooing the great work of Bush’s
Justice Department in indicting and making the world safe from terrorism.
The course of the case followed.
We tried the case in 2005 to a jury, of course sitting not ten blocks
from the World Trade Center, and an anonymous jury, I might add, which
I think went a long way to contribute to our convictions. And all three
of us were convicted. Since that time, the appeals process has followed.
The appeal was argued almost two years ago, and the opinion just came
like a—actually like a thunderclap yesterday. And to just put it in
perspective, I think, it comes hard on the heels of Holder’s announcement
that they are bringing the men from Guantanamo to New York to be tried.
