This evening at the Federal Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street in downtown New York City, Lynn Stewart 70, the “People's Lawyer,” was re-sentenced to ten years in prison, despite the fact that she was already serving a 28 month sentence that started last year on November 19, 2009 after her bail was revoked. She may appeal this sentence as well as potentially approach the Supreme Court.  In a somber courthouse scene, Stewart before her sentence was announced, had pleaded leniency for no additional jail time. She cited health problems like having to undergo treatment for breast cancer and advanced age. Notwithstanding her moving account of how life in prison had caused her physical and mental health to deteriorate further and that “a prison sentence was like a death sentence,” the court showed no mercy.

The crime that Ms. Stewart  is serving her decade long sentence took place more than a decade ago, before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the passing of the Patriot Act by Congress. She was counsel to the blind cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman who was accused by the government of masterminding both the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and later in 1995 for a host of foiled terrorist attacks around major landmarks in New York City. Unable to trump up any evidence linking the sheikh to these crimes, besides wiretaps of the Sheikh referring to and encouraging these attacks in conversation, the government convicted him  of “seditious conspiracy,” an antiquated nineteenth century law. This law has rarely been used since the Civil War and the McCarthy witch-hunt of communists. Sheikh Rahman has been serving a life sentence since 1996.

Stewart  in a Reuters interview in mid June 2000, read out comments that were quoted as the Sheikh's support for withdrawing a ceasefire in Egypt that had been in effect since 1998 between Islamic Group members and the government of Egypt. Since then Stewart has maintained that she was misquoted and that Sheikh Rehman asked his followers to reconsider and not necessarily withdraw from the ceasefire, which was seen as a tacit approval for the Islamic Group to resume violence against the Egyptian state.

This interview, the government alleges was a direct violation of the Special Administration Measures or SAMS, laws that had just been created  at the time and that Stewart had agreed to abide by in her representation of the radical cleric. Following this breach, the government had obtained  a secret warrant through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to wiretap  Stewart's correspondence and prison visits with her client. Since then this act, which is a direct violation of Amendments I, IV, and VI of the U.S. Constitution, has been amended twice. First by the Patriot Act of 2001, to include terrorist groups and secondly by the Protect America Act of 2007, which removed the warrant requirement altogether for the wiretapping of anyone considered to be a terrorist suspect or sympathizer.

Subsequently on April 9, 2002,  Stewart was arrested outside her Brooklyn home and her office was raided where thousands of her files for other cases were confiscated. The now disgraced John Ashcroft who was at the time U.S. Attorney General charged with a media frenzy and even making an appearance on the David Letterman show to speak of the case, accused Stewart and her translators  of conspiracy and aiding and abetting terrorism. She was indicted on five counts of terrorism charges of which two were later dismissed by federal judge John Koetl. Stewart was still facing up to thirty years in prison.  On February10, 2005 after a nine month trial, which witnessed thousands of Lynn supporters defying the fear mongering and intimidation of the government and corporate media, Stewart was found guilty of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, and defrauding the U.S government She was sentenced to 28 months of prison time and was released on a $500,000 bail until
 her appeal conviction came up for hearing.

Her appeal was overturned, her convictions were reaffirmed and after delays due to her cancer treatment, Stewart began to serve her sentence since November 17, 2009. This was after a three judge-panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on her and the government's appeals. The higher court demanded that Stewart be re-sentenced by the same judge who had originally sentenced her, claiming that her sentence was “breathtakingly low,” and urged him to consider additional factors and the maximum sentence of 30 years.

A point which seemed to be largely unaddressed during yesterday's court hearing was that Stewart's breach of the SAM took place in a pre 9/11 judicial system that was still unsure of how to implement such rules. In addition, Stewart's co-counsel Ramsey Clark in the Sheikh Rahman case and even John Ashcroft before becoming U.S. Attorney General have breached these regulations on more than one occasion. Janet Reno the U.S. Attorney General during the last year of the Clinton administration when Stewart actually committed the offense, had declined to prosecute her. It can be said that the Bush administration under John Ashcroft, and later the Obama administration under Eric Holder by going after Lynn Stewart religiously over the last ten years, have sought to give a stern warning to any attorney wishing to challenge the status quo of the government's unconstitutional practice of arresting, interrogating and incarcerating terrorist suspects.

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