Supporters pack hearing for Lynne Stewart

Supporters of human-rights champion and “people’s attorney” Lynne Stewart packed the courtroom in downtown Manhattan to overflowing for her Feb. 29 hearing. They were there to show support for an appeal to reduce the 10-year prison sentence Stewart began serving two years ago. Her supporters were so numerous that many could not even get into the courtroom.

The entire case against Stewart is about a wildly fabricated charge of aiding terrorism based on a press release issued 12 years ago for a convicted former client, Sheik Omar Rahman. Stewart, Ramsey Clark and Abdeen Jabara were the lawyers who defended the sheik, a blind Egyptian Muslim leader who was convicted of “seditious conspiracy” in 1995.

In the frantic, right-wing atmosphere following Sept. 11, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft had federal agents arrest Stewart in April 2002 without warning and charged her with crimes that were not even on the books at the time the press release was issued. After a nine-month trial in 2005, Stewart was sentenced in 2006 by Judge John G. Koeltl to 28 months in federal prison.

A three-person panel of judges in the Appeals Court for the Second Circuit later insisted that Stewart’s penalty be increased. Judge Koeltl, under pressure from his peers and from the media, quadrupled her original sentence to 10 years. The Feb. 29 appeals hearing was before the same Second Circuit court, which had no immediate response.

At a rally after the hearing, Stewart’s spouse Ralph Poyter spoke, as did Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the Black Panther Party, international human-rights activist Ramsey Clark, longtime anti-war activist Ralph Schoenman, and Sara Flounders. They pledged and urged continuing support for Stewart.

It is such mobilizations of love and solidarity in the streets that will help keep 72-year-old Stewart alive as legal challenges and a new appeal are raised.

The determination to continue the struggle to appeal this outrageous sentence and free Lynne Stewart is enormous.

The writer is a co-director of the International Action Center, a main organizer of support activities for Stewart.