[Ppnews] An Interview with Lynne Stewart

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/colson06142006.html

June 14, 2006


An Interview with Lynne Stewart


"They Want the Fear Level at a High Pitch"

By NICOLE COLSON

Lynne Stewart has dedicated her career as a 
lawyer to defending civil liberties, left-wing 
causes and politically "unpopular" clients. Now, 
at age 66, she faces a possible prison sentence 
of 30 years and the end of her legal career--for 
nothing more than doing her job in representing her client.

The government witch-hunt against Stewart stems 
from her work as a defense attorney for Sheik 
Omar Abdel Rahman, a Muslim cleric convicted in 
1995 of conspiring with followers in the Islamic 
Group to bomb several New York City landmarks.

In 2000, as part of a legal strategy designed to 
keep Abdel Rahman--in ailing health and held in 
total isolation in prison--in the public eye, 
Stewart read a press release to a Reuters 
reporter in Cairo detailing Abdel Rahman's 
withdrawal of his personal support for a 
ceasefire between the Islamic Group and the Egyptian government.

Two years later, in the wake of the September 11 
attacks and the passage of the civil 
liberties-shredding USA PATRIOT Act, Stewart was 
indicted for this "crime. Then-Attorney General 
John Ashcroft appeared on Late Night with David 
Letterman to claim that her actions in 2000 "materially aided" terrorists.

The government also claims that Stewart's actions 
violated "special administrative 
measures"--regulations imposed on Abdel Rahman in 
1997 that prohibited him from communicating with 
people other than his lawyers or certain family members.

Stewart and interpreter Mohammed Yousry were 
tried, along with Ahmed Abdel Sattar, who the 
government claims conveyed messages from Rahman 
to his followers in the Islamic Group.

Evidence at the trial included taped phone 
conversations and prison meetings between Abdel 
Rahman and Stewart--a clear violation of 
attorney-client privilege, approved in Stewart's 
case by a secret government court and since made "legal" under the Patriot Act.

The government admits that no violence ever 
resulted from Stewart or Yousry's actions. Yet 
because the judge refused to hold separate 
proceedings, the jury was bombarded during the 
seven months of the trial with a mountain of 
prejudicial "evidence" that included more than 
85,000 intercepts of Abdel Sattar's phone 
conversations with Islamic Group militants over a 
seven-year period, two videotapes of Osama bin 
Laden, and the testimony of a German citizen who 
was present during the 1997 bombing of tourists in Luxor, Egypt.

Incredibly, the judge allowed the evidence--while 
instructing the jury that it was either not 
"offered for the truth," not offered against 
Stewart, or only offered as "background" or for 
"state of mind." But the idea that a jury sitting 
less than a mile away from the site of the World 
Trade Center would be able to disregard 
videotapes of Osama bin Laden when deliberating 
on Stewart's case is preposterous.

On February 10, 2005, Stewart, Yousry and Abdel 
Sattar were convicted on all counts. Stewart's 
original sentencing, scheduled for March, was 
delayed after it was announced that she has been 
fighting cancer. She is now scheduled to be sentenced on September 25.


COLSON: YOUR CONVICTION rested in part on your 
reading a press release from your client to a 
Reuters reporter in 2000. But it wasn't until two 
years later, after the September 11 attacks, that 
you were indicted. Why do you think the 
government waited so long? Do you think the 
indictment was politically motivated?

STEWART: TO ANSWER the last question first, there 
definitely were political motivations. I somehow 
have a glimmering that it never would have happened if there hadn't been 9/11.

But of course, the Bush administration was 
anxious to keep the fear level at a very high 
pitch. If you remember back to April 2002, which 
is when I was arrested, they had the Patriot Act 
in place, they had all this stuff going on, and 
they had very, very little to show for it--a few 
enemy combatants that were picked up in Afghanistan, but nothing else.

So I think they reached back and used this to 
drum up--or trump up I guess--a sense among 
people that there was something to be feared, and 
that they were on top of it and were taking care 
of it. I think this was exemplified by the fact 
that Ashcroft, the Attorney General, then went on 
Letterman to beat his chest and say what a great bunch of guys they were.

So definitely, I think [my arrest] was to keep 
the fear level at a high pitch--because when 
people are afraid, they tend to give up 
decision-making power and allow the "authorities" to do it.

HOW DO your trial and conviction fit in more 
generally with broader attacks on civil liberties?

THE ACTS that are the basis of the indictment 
took place in 2000, so that's pre-Patriot Act. 
But there's no question in my mind that the 
Patriot Act gave a certain aura to what the 
government had done in my case, which made it 
much easier for the judge to find that listening 
in on attorney-client conversations was okay.

The judge made absolutely no rulings that said 
anything the government had done was 
constitutionally wrong--even though it was a 
wholesale invasion of probably the First 
Amendment, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth.

I do think that my case really goes to the heart 
of the Bill of Rights, and the Bill of Rights is 
diminished by my conviction. I think that's 
exactly what this administration and this government wants to see happen.

YOU MENTIONED that the taping of your 
conversations with your client was approved under 
a law that came from the Clinton years, which I 
think probably will surprise people.

I'M NOT really sure that it was ever thought that 
the law was going to be applied toward 
attorney-client privilege material, because 
traditionally, under all of the law that has been 
written, privileged material is always exempt 
from whatever the law provides for.

But we have to assume, because they told us they 
had warrants. We have no way of finding out if 
they didn't. We are making a motion demanding to 
know whether they listened in on my office 
phones, my home phone, my cell phone--anything I 
had--under these NSA wiretaps, because they never revealed that.

WHAT KIND of message do you think surveillance of 
lawyers' conversations sends to other defense attorneys?

I CAN only report back from the "front"--in other 
words, talking to other lawyers. They all say the 
same thing--that they are really hampered. They 
think three, four or five times before they do 
even a simple thing, like call another lawyer to 
discuss a case. Or if the family of some of the 
Guantánamo detainees, for example, calls and 
says, "How is my brother/cousin/uncle?" they have 
to think about whether they can give this person that information.

Certainly, I think there's nobody practicing 
today who does not at least account for the 
possibility that the conversations between the 
client and him or her are being listened to.

This is the bedrock foundation of 
representation--that the client can tell you 
anything, and you can absorb it, keep it to 
yourself and utilize it if you can, and not 
utilize it if you don't need to. It establishes 
the kind of trust that's necessary.

For those reasons, I think it really has been a 
cosmic shift in the way we represent people in 
this country--the fact that government could do 
this, and it wasn't held to be illegal.

THE GOVERNMENT admitted that no violence ever 
resulted from your actions, yet prosecutors 
played a videotape of Osama bin Laden during the trial?

RIGHT, TWO of them. And when you say "played," 
you have to envision a screen that's about 20 
feet high by 15 feet across, and it's being 
played in a foreign language, and it looks so ominous.

The purpose was clearly just to put a smear on 
it--to make the jury "appreciate" what terrorism was all about.

I understand there was a news article--I think in 
the New Jersey Bergen Record--where they said 
that that there was a memo circulated that anyone 
who was doing a terrorism case in the U.S. 
Attorney's office should definitely try to get 
bin Laden into the evidence somehow or other. 
Because, of course, it's got to have an impact on 
a jury. It's like getting hit in the gut.

But we expect that of the government. That's my 
whole career. I've always fought the government 
because I know that they will stoop to anything 
to accomplish their aim, whatever that may be. It 
may just be wanting a conviction of a certain 
person, but in other cases--certainly the 
political cases--it's very clear that their goal is broader than that.

YOU WERE tried along with two co-defendants. Do 
you think that harmed your case?

WE DID ask for a severance, and we were denied. 
We asked for many severances during the trial. 
When the bin Laden stuff came up, we asked for a 
severance since it was only directed toward one 
of the defendants--and only for his "state of 
mind," because he possessed this tape. But those requests weren't granted.

I think my case was unique. I would have 
preferred to have the jury focus on the lawyer 
and whether "materially aiding" is really 
separable from doing the work we're expected to do.

I'm not saying they hurt my case. But I think it 
took away from the jury's ability to really focus.

CAN YOU talk a little bit about the "Special 
Administrative Measures" that you're accused of 
violating, and what effect they actually have on 
you as a lawyer and your ability to properly defend a client?

THIS IS a new animal. It's basically a Bureau of 
Prisons regulation. It's like a lot of government 
regulations, executive orders, etc., that form a 
network of regulations that most people aren't even aware of.

They impose these special administrative measures 
in order to restrict a defendant--not the lawyer, 
they were against my client--in communicating with the outside world.

Maybe in the case of some Mafia guy who's 
ordering hits from prison, it might be 
appropriate. But there's no proof that my client 
was ever doing that. He was merely maintaining relationships of longstanding.

If we were to think of Mumia Abu-Jamal, for 
example, under a regulation where he could only 
call his family once a month and speak to his 
lawyers once a day, we would never have the 
insight and understanding of the man that we 
have, and we would not be favored by his opinions 
of what's going on in this world of ours.

It's a double restriction, and probably one that 
is questionable regarding the First Amendment. 
But it's in place--it's "allowable." They've been 
litigated, but mainly for persons of violence, 
who were advocating "do this, do that to 
so-and-so." So I don't think it's ever had a true Constitutional test.

Notwithstanding that, they were in place and, in 
my mind, almost impossible to interpret. If 
you're thinking on the one hand, "How do I 
advocate for my client?" and on the other hand, 
"How do I stay within these regulations?" it's 
very, very difficult to find a place of safety.

It was certainly something the government could 
slam me with on almost every occasion.

We also pointed out to the jury that although I 
had read out this press release in June of 2000, 
Ramsey Clark had made many press releases on 
behalf of the sheik, some almost identical, by 
calling Reuters and doing it over the phone, or 
handing them out at a press conference. He never even got a letter.

I'm not saying I'm Ramsey Clark. My father was a 
schoolteacher, not a Supreme Court Justice, and I 
was never the Attorney General of the United States.

In my own mind, I thought they accorded us this 
courtesy--that press releases filtered through 
lawyers were permissible. And I was wrong. I'm 
not saying I was set up, but it has a sort of a smell to it.

The fact of the matter is, as you said earlier, 
that nothing ever happened. They made a big deal 
out of it, but it was a political statement--just 
like a million others we've seen and read from 
people in jail. It's not the same as a call to arms.

THE GOVERNMENT really went after your personal political beliefs, didn't they?

I REPEATEDLY tried to point out that my politics 
were my own--and actually, if they wanted to go 
down that road, it was obvious that my politics 
were very far from Islamic fundamentalism.

I consider myself a feminist. I consider myself a 
socialist at the minimum, probably a little 
further to the left than that--a communist, in 
the final analysis, maybe a Maoist.

Those words, I don't think, actually came out at 
the trial. But what they tried to do was show 
that I am a person who isn't opposed to violence. 
But that has nothing whatsoever to do with my 
representation of clients. They are each entitled 
to their politics, and I do my best to represent the person, not the politics.

As a matter of fact, you really have to set this 
aside many times, because you deal with such 
terrible selfishness and greed in doing criminal 
work. My politics only inform me. They don't inform the way I work.

YOU'RE NOW facing 30 years in prison. Do you have 
any expectations for what you might receive as a sentence?

I REALLY don't know, but I think we're going to give it a tremendous fight.

Liz Fink, the attorney for the Attica Brothers, 
is now part of my defense team. She understands, 
probably better than anyone else, how we lawyers 
who are decidedly anti-government, when we sign 
on with a client, we sign on for life. It doesn't 
stop when the court recesses. It's a commitment to that human being.

I think we're going to present all that at 
sentencing, and we're going to talk about my 
health problems--this cancer that, although it 
seems to be in check now, I'm happy to say, 
remains an open question. They're never completely sure that you're "cured."

So those issues, plus my age, plus my service to 
the community--all of those things will be 
issues. But it's really all up to this judge, and 
it's very difficult to predict what he will or will not do.

The government is going to take a very hard line. We know that.

THROUGHOUT THE trial, and in spite of your health 
problems, you've remained very outspoken. Can you 
talk about why it's important to keep up that fight?

BECAUSE WE have an obligation to expose what's 
happening. That's all we can do these days. We're 
not so organized to be able to put pressure to 
bear on them, akin to something like a real 
general strike. We don't seem to be able to get 
people to see things in as stark a terms as we do.

But I do believe it's incremental. I think that, 
compared to where we were when I was first 
arrested in April 2002, today, there are more and 
more people who are not willing to accept anything the government says anymore.

I think that's valuable. Reminding people that 
the government is conducting a "war on terror," 
but look who the victim is here--a lawyer who 
fought for the underprivileged, who went out 
there at no monetary gain and defended people who 
other people wouldn't even look at.

There's also the sense that Muslims have been 
demonized by this government as "the enemy," as 
"non-human beings," as "devils," or whatever. To 
say that this grandmotherly lawyer went the full 
nine yards for her client, who happened to be one 
of these people, also sends a message.

It's also to give people courage. You can't 
imagine how many young people come up to me and 
say, "You know, because of what you're doing, I 
feel that I can do something." And that makes me very, very happy.

WHAT CAN people do to help support you?

SEPTEMBER 25 is coming. We're going to have a 
tremendous turnout. We not only want to fill the 
courtroom, but we'd like to fill the courthouse, 
and the square out front and everyplace else to 
show the numbers who are willing to take out a 
day from their lives to oversee what this judge is going to do.

We are also always in need of contributions, 
especially now that I'm unable to do much 
speaking or anything else to try to raise money, 
because I've been convalescing here for so long.

But the real thing is to stay with me in spirit. 
I think that the worst thing in this era is this 
alienation--the sense that you're all alone. So 
many people are so happy with their SUVs and 
their remote controls, and are we nuts that we're 
out here fighting this? But when I go to an 
event, and people come over--when I just know 
that people are there--it's very, very important 
to me, and I think to them also.

Really, for me, that's what being a part of the 
left is--to be part of a larger group that wants to really make a better world.

How you can support Lynne Stewart

YOU CAN show your support for Lynne by making a 
donation to her defense fund. To contribute, or 
for more information on Lynne's case, visit 
<http://www.lynnestewart.org/>www.lynnestewart.org 
on the Web. Donations can also be sent to the 
Lynne Stewart Legal Defense Fund, 350 Broadway, Suite 700, New York, NY 10013.

Nicole Colson writes for the 
<http://www.www.socialistworker.org/>Socialist Worker.


The Freedom Archives
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