Lawyer convicted after aiding sheikh

NEW YORK — Lynne Stewart, a New York civil-rights lawyer who represented smalltime criminals and radicals alike before losing her license to practice law after she was convicted in a terrorism case, has died of cancer three years after her release from prison.

Stewart, 77, died Tuesday in the Brooklyn home she shared with her husband, Ralph Poynter. She had long fought cancer and recently suffered strokes.

Stewart received a “compassionate release” from prison on Dec. 31, 2013, after serving more than four years of a 10year sentence. She was convicted of smuggling messages from blind Egyptian sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman to his followers while he served a life sentence for his 1995 conviction in conspiracies to assassinate Egypt’s president and bomb five New York City landmarks. Abdel-Rahman died last month.

Judge John Koeltl, who presided over her 2005 trial, initially sentenced her to about two years in prison, 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.

Stewart was disbarred after her conviction. In interviews, she described herself as a political prisoner.

The mother of seven was a schoolteacher in Harlem in the 1960s before undertaking a legal career that put her in the public spotlight. Her clients ranged from small-time crooks to members of the Black Panthers, Weather Underground Organization leaders, a former hit man, and a man accused of trying to kill nine police officers.

“She marched to a different drummer, and the drummer was good,” Poynter said.