Rebellious lawyer served 4 years over terrorist’s messages
Associated Press
NEW YORK — A rebellious civil rights lawyer who was sentenced to a decade behind bars for helping a notorious Egyptian terrorist communicate with followers from his U. S. jail cell has died of cancer, three years after her release from prison.
Lynne F. Stewart, who had an unorthodox career representing small- time criminals and radicals alike before losing her law license over her dealings with the terrorist, Omar Abdel- Rahman, died Tuesday at her Brooklyn home, said her husband, Ralph Poynter. She was 77 and had recently suffered strokes.
“She marched to a different drummer, and the drummer was good,” an emotional Poynter said Wednesday.
Ms. Stewart received a “compassionate release” from prison on Dec. 31, 2013, after serving more than four years of her 10- year sentence. She was convicted of letting Abdel- Rahman, the so- called “Blind Sheikh,” overcome strict prison rules meant to cut off contact with the outside world while he served a life sentence for conspiring to assassinate Egypt’s president and bomb five New York City landmarks. Ms. Stewart was projected to live less than 18 months.
Abdel- Rahman, who was convicted in 1995, died in prison last month.
Judge John G. Koeltl, who presided over her 2005 trial, initially sentenced Ms. Stewart to about two years in prison. He described her in heroic terms, saying her representation of the poor, disadvantaged and unpopular provided a “service not only to her clients but to the nation.” He stiffened the sentence after an appeals panel balked.
Ms. Stewart was disbarred after being convicted in the case brought six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In interviews, she described herself as a political prisoner. At trial, she called herself a “revolutionary with a small ‘ r.’”
Assistant U. S. Attorney Andrew S. Dember wrote prior to sentencing that Ms. Stewart “played a central role in repeated fraudulent attempts to pass messages to and from Abdel- Rahman.”
The mother of seven was a schoolteacher in Harlem in the 1960s before launching a legal career that brought her into the public spotlight. Her clients ranged from smalltime crooks to members of the Black Panthers, Weather Underground leaders, a former hit man and a man accused of trying to kill nine police officers.
Despite illness, Ms. Stewart remained outspoken to the end. A longtime believer in armed struggle as a way of fostering political revolution, she said in a September interview that the killings of police officers had acted as “a deterrent” against the killings of unarmed civilians by police.