'A secret ... channel'Prosecutors say lawyer for sheik imprisoned in '93

[seemslikeadream]

Prosecutors say lawyer for sheik imprisoned in '93 WTC bombing enabled client to communicate with followers who then carried out terrorist

BY PATRICIA HURTADO
STAFF WRITER

October 18, 2004


Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman is blind and diabetic and has been held incommunicado in federal prison for seven years after convictions for inciting followers to carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a foiled plot to bomb New York landmarks.

Yet, during those seven years, Abdel-Rahman was able to get out his incendiary message to militant followers, with deadly results, through his lawyer, Lynne Stewart, and two others, the government has said in a five-month trial in federal court in Manhattan.

Prosecutors have cited violence and threats carried out in the name of the sheik: the 1997 massacre of 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt; kidnappings of 73 tourists in the Philippines in 2000; the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen; and a threat by terrorist Mustafa Hamza to kidnap Americans in retaliation for Abdel-Rahman's incarceration.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Morvillo has pointed to Stewart and her co-defendants, Mohammed Yousry, an Arabic interpreter, and Ahmed Sattar, a U.S. postal worker and paralegal for the sheik in his 1995 trial, as being the "secret underground communications channel" that helped Abdel-Rahman pass messages to his followers in the Islamic Group, an Egypt-based terrorist organization.

All three have pleaded not guilty. If convicted, Stewart and Yousry face up to 10 years in prison. Sattar, who is charged in a separate conspiracy to kill and kidnap Americans, faces up to life imprisonment if convicted.
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http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-nyterr184010743oct18,0,1068278.story?coll=ny-nynews-headlines

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. How much do you want to bet that this is another trumped-up....

..."terra" case, particularly against the lawyer, Lynne Stewart?

[geek tragedy]

2. Not a dime.

The translator is Grade AAA terrorist scum.

Stewart crossed the line and was engaging in unethical behavior. Was it illegal? Very possibly.

[bemildred]

3. Some more on this case:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel1012.html

[Old and In the Way]

4. Hmmmmm....let that be a lesson to anyone who wishes to defend

a terrorist....or question this administration's "War on Terror". Do they have incontrovertible proof that Stewart was actively pipelining instructions to terrorists around the world? I really want to see this proof.

Not sayng that Abdel-Ramnan is not a criminal, but I wonder how much of this is directed towards other lawyers for suspects that have been incarcerated by the Ashcroft Justice Dept.

[seventhson]

5. Agreed, This case is Bushit. Trying to silence and chill lawyerrs

representing the despised.

I knew civil rights attorney Bill Kuntsler and worked with him (he was involved in this case before his tragic and untimely death about 8 years ago)

When asked how he could represent alleged Arab terorists (he was Jewish) or the killer of the Hasidic man in Brooklyn by a Black Man or the LI railroad shooter, he used to say that it was the MOST despised n society who need Constitutional Protection the most. That if those who are despised CANNOT get fair justice an due process then ALL of us are vulnerable.

He also liked to tell the story of his Michaelangelo "David" statue on his shelf: How David must have thought, when facing an impossible to win battle with the giant: either I am successful and save my people or I end up just another dead Jewish boy destoyed by the enemy. This was his operating principle : to serve the people.

This case is a set up of the worst and most shameful sort: a retaliation against those who fight for the least of us in order to protect the rights of the rest of us.