Rally held for Lynne Stewart

A large support rally for civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart was held on Jan. 28 in Harlem, N.Y. The crowd filled St. Mary’s Church the night before she was scheduled to appear for Oral Arguments on Appeal at U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Lynne Stewart and her spouse, Ralph Poynter, at Jan. 29 court hearing. WW photo: Sara Flounders

At the rally Stewart didn’t just recap her case; she framed it in the larger struggle against political repression. Stewart demonstrated once again that she continues to identify with resistance. She asked for a moment of silence to mark the recent passing of Dr. George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The now 68-year-old Stewart was arrested six months after 9/11 after former Attorney General John Ashcroft, on the David Letterman TV show, leveled wild charges against her for aiding and abetting “terrorists.” She was part of the defense team in 1995, along with attorneys Ramsey Clark and Abdeen Jabara, for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.

Her widely publicized arrest was an effort to silence and intimidate lawyers and many in the legal profession from defending the many Muslims who were being rounded up in wide government dragnets.

Stewart refused to be intimidated by the outrageous charges. She fought back, organized a defense committee and made her trial a political challenge to the Bush administration and a rallying cry for all those facing government persecution for their political ideas.

Stewart explained that her prosecution represented an assault by the government on defense lawyers who were willing to represent unpopular clients. “I did nothing wrong. I’m a lawyer. I did what lawyers should do.”

After a seven month trial she was convicted of enabling her client—the blind and disabled Sheik Rahman, who is held in total isolated lockdown 24 hours a day—to communicate with his followers by making a public statement, supposedly through a press release that Stewart issued on the case.

Stewart was sentenced in 2006 to 28 months and disbarred. Her translator, Mohammed Yousry, was sentenced to one year and eight months, and Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a former U.S. postal worker, was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

The Jan. 29  hearing was before the 2nd U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, a panel of three judges, who review whether the convictions should stand, and, if so, whether the trial judge should give new, lengthier sentences. The prosecution argued for far lengthier sentences for the three defendants.

After the hearing Lynne Stewart gave a summation of the proceedings to WBAI radio reporter Sally O’Brien. The three-judge panel could render a decision on the sentencing in weeks or in a year.

As Stewart explained, “None of us are guilty of any crime.” She described the conditions at Florence Prison in Colorado where Stewart’s co-defendant Ahmed Sattar and Rahman are held.

Florence is a supermax prison where prisoners are tortured by repressive techniques of highly refined sensory deprivation and total isolation. Stewart explained that the lack of human contact is so extreme that even food is delivered by mechanized means.

She also took the time to repeat a warning to political activists and especially to Muslims who continue to be targeted with government visits and harassment. “You have an absolute right to refuse to talk to government officials without a lawyer present. The government is not there to help. They are not visiting you to be nice. They have an agenda. Protect yourself.”