Lynne Stewart has for forty years defended the poor and the oppressed
against arbitrary authority and false charges

Lynne Stewart, together with former Attorney-General Ramsey Clark and Abdeen
Jabar defended Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was tried and convicted of
plotting to blow up noted landmarks, including the George Washington Bridge,
Lincoln Tunnel, Holland Tunnel, Statue of Liberty, and to assassinate
Senator Alphonse D’Amato and U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali

Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman was innocent of these charges and had no part in
the initiation, planning or execution of these presumptive plots.

Indisputable and massive evidence has demonstrated that the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, through its operatives, including Emad Ali Salem, was, in
fact, the author of these plots and planned, initiated and financed these
and other acts of terror, including the bombing of the World Trade Center in
1993 in a “false flag” operation

Attorney General John Ashcroft launched a cynical campaign to persecute and
prosecute Lynne Stewart for “aiding and abetting terrorism” based upon her
serving as defense attorney for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman

The Justice Department has undertaken the persecution and prosecution of
Lynne Stewart because she defended her falsely accused client zealously and
refused to be intimidated by the drumbeat of government propaganda arising
from its false “war on terror”

Lynne Stewart has been tried and convicted in District Court of JudgeJohn G.
Koeltl of aiding and abetting terrorism based solely on the fact that she
defended a man demonized by the State, for the purpose of creating a climate
of fear in the United States and public acquiescence in global wars of
conquest including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and beyond

Judge Koeltl sentenced Lynne Stewart to 28 months in Federal prison,
although the prosecution demanded 30 years imprisonment based upon
government “sentencing guidelines”

Lynne Stewart at 70 years of age with serious medical issues was remanded to
prison, even though her Appeal is under review and her potential further
Appeal to the Supreme Court is pending, and remanded her to prison despite
the fact that Lynne Stewart had surgery scheduled at a major New York
hospital.

The prison authorities have denied Lynne Stewart her proper medication,
disallowed her surgery as scheduled and subjected her to treatment in prison
that places her survival in jeopardy

Judges on the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have issued additional
commentaries pressuring Judge Koeltl to increase the sentence of Lynne
Stewart by decades for “enhancing terrorism,” a demand based solely upon
Lynne Stewart’s presumptive “violation” of unconstitutional prison
administrative measures that require attorneys to agree in advance to
abrogate their right to disseminate publicly information pertaining to their
client’s status, views or advocacy.

Judge Sack of the Second Circuit Appellate Court, who urged a far more
severe sentence for Lynne Stewart, was for many years a law partner of Judge
Mukasey, the judge who sentenced Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to 100 years
imprisonment, yet Judge Sack refused to recuse himself and led the charge
demanding a massive increase in the sentence imposed on Lynne Stewart

Judge Mukasey advocated in the Wall Street Journal, shortly before becoming
Attorney General, that people accused of “terrorism” should be denied due
process and condemned to indefinite detention in a “parallel judicial
system” that treats such people as ”mental deficients” to be ordered by
administrative decree to mental institutions

This persecution and prosecution of Lynne Stewart by a criminal state is a
direct parallel to the historic Dreyfus Case that gave rise to the expose of
the corruption and cynicism of the French government by Emile Zola in his
historic declaration entitled “J’Accuse” (I Accuse!)

The persecution and prosecution of Lynne Stewart is a calculated threat to
every lawyer in the United States who defends clients targeted and demonized
by a criminal State

The New York Times on March 8, 2010 in its lead editorial entitled “Are You
or Have You Ever Been a Lawyer?” raises the alarm that “in this era,
demagogues on the right are smearing loyal Americans as disloyal and
charging that the government is being undermined from within”

The New York Times editorial states that cynical and dishonest people “twist
the role of lawyers in the justice system” and states emphatically that “In
representing Guatanamo detainees, they were in no way advocating for
terrorism. They were ensuring that deeply disliked individuals were able to
make their case in court, even ones charged with heinous acts – and that the
Constitution was defended”

The New York Times editorial concludes,“If lawyers who take on controversial
causes are demonized with impunity, it will be difficult for unpopular
people to get representation – and constitutional rights that protect all
Americans will be weakened”

The Justice Department of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in framing an
innocent man, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and the subsequent persecution,
prosecution, conviction and draconian sentencing of Lynne Stewart, threaten
not merely every defense lawyer, but every inhabitant of the United States
with drastic curtailment of democratic rights and civil liberties, and seeks
to eliminate our ability to expose and oppose criminal wars abroad and
repressive measures at home

Join in this urgent campaign and support public meetings involving a broad
coalition of civil rights,human rights, anti-war, 9/11 Truth and labor
organizations to defend Lynne Stewart and the fundamental democratic rights
now at risk, to which her life has been devoted and that her case embodies.

∑ Call upon Judge Koeltl to defy attempts by judges on the Second Circuit to
usurp his own proper judgment and jurisdiction by dictating a vengeful
sentence that is a death sentence upon the U.S. constitution.

∑ Write accordingly directly to: The Honorable Judge John G. Koeltl, United
States District Judge, Southern District of New York, 500 Pearl Street, New
York, N.Y. 10013.

∑ Email copies of your letter to Judge Koeltl to Ralph Poynter and Lynne
Stewart at Ralph.Poynter [at] yahoo.com /
info [at] lynnestewart.org./takingaim [at] pacbell.net and obtain ongoing information.

∑ Mail a copy of your letter to Judge Koeltl to the Lynne Stewart Defense
Committee at 350 Broadway, Suite 700, N.Y., N.Y. 10013


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

FREE LYNNE STEWART – RESIST THE DESTRUCTION OF
DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS IN AMERICA


Lynne Stewart has devoted her life to defending the poor and the oppressed.
After forty years of exposing government targeting of the most vulnerable
and exploited in our society, the government has now acted to bury her
alive.

The government prosecution, conviction and imprisonment of Lynne Stewart is
based solely upon the fact that she joined former Attorney-General Ramsey
Clark and attorney Abdeen Jabbar in defending Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman
against the trumped up charge that he organized and implemented a terrorist
plot to blow up noted landmarks, including the George Washington Bridge,
Lincoln Tunnel, Statue of Liberty and United Nations, along with planning to
assassinate then Senator Alphonse D’Amato and former U.N. Secretary General
Boutros-Boutros Ghali.

These charges were false. The plot was entirely an FBI plan designed to
ensnare young men attending the mosque of the Sheikh in order to create a
climate of fear in the United States and to provide a pretext for wars
abroad and the drastic infringement of democratic rights at home.

These are the stakes in the government’s own conspiracy against all defense
lawyers who dare to represent those targeted by a criminal State.

Even federal investigators, high-ranking Justice Department lawyers and
Attorney General Janet Reno herself doubted the evidence. The Los Angeles
Times reported on August 28, 1993 that “For weeks, federal investigators
privately voiced their doubts about the quality of the evidence supporting
the government’s case against Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman.”

“But in the end,” the article revealed, “Attorney General Janet Reno
overcame her own misgivings, as well as those of her subordinates and
concluded that the alleged conspiracy was ‘a case that had to be
prosecuted…’”


The then Attorney General was muscled into proceeding with false charges
against the Sheikh arising from a plot prepared by the F.B.I. itself, as
documented in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and London Times.

Lynne Stewart was herself convicted in a trial where endless hours of
footage of Osama bin Laden and the attacks of September 11th, 2001 – all
entirely unrelated to the events of 1993 – were allowed by the court to be
introduced in trial in a reckless and illegal attempt to frighten and
intimidate the jury.

In a case that is a watershed in the direct assault upon democratic rights
in the United States, Lynne Stewart has been railroaded to prison in an
ominous threat to any attorney who defends people falsely accused and
targeted by the U.S. government. If lawyers can be enfolded within the crime
imputed to the client they defend, merely for acting as their attorney, no
one can get a fair trial in the United States.

The basis of the government’s claim that Lynne Stewart “aided and supported
terrorism” by defending Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman is that she released a
Press Release to Reuters and other news agencies containing the views of the
Sheikh on political events in Egypt!

Unconstitutional restrictions upon defense lawyers had been introduced in
the form of new prison administrative procedures called Special
Administrative Measures or SAMS. These measures required attorneys to agree
not to disseminate information pertaining to their clients.

Thus, while the government uses the Press without restraint to orchestrate
official propaganda promoting prosecutorial claims, defense lawyers are to
be denied the right to use the press to advocate for their clients and to
present their clients opinions and ideas.

The sole penalty for violating these arbitrary administrative restrictions
upon the constitutional rights of defense attorneys is that the prison can
deny access by the lawyer to the defendant until the matter is resolved.

Even these SAMS – designed to muzzle lawyers and prevent them from
exercising their free speech rights and to restrict illegally their ability
to defend their clients in the public arena – are strictly administrative
rules.

To defy them – as Ramsey Clark and Abdeen Jabbar elected to do – no less
than Lynne Stewart - carries no legal consequences for the attorney. To
breach these administrative restraints is not a crime or an act for which
the perpetrator can be charged or prosecuted.

Yet in a mockery of the entire judicial process, the Second Circuit
Appellate Judges have deployed the breach of these prison administrative
rulings as a major crime – one of “enhancing terrorism” and of “perjury” for
which decades of imprisonment are in order!

The comments by judges in the Second Circuit are without even the pretence
of a judicial or legal basis. They are political rants and reckless threats
to Judge Koeltl demanding that he increase the28 month sentence of Lynne
Stewart to decades in prison.

The statements by several Second Circuit Judges are injudicious, hysterical
assertions that the Sheikh is one of the most dangerous terrorists in the
world. The Second Circuit judges cite a speech that Lynne Stewart gave to a
public meeting of law students – patent hearsay derived from newspaper
reports - in which Lynne is quoted as stating that she had done nothing
wrong in advocating for her client and would do it again.

Second Circuit Judges assert that their statements are “a wink and a nod” to
Judge Koeltl, letting him understand that unless he increases the sentence
of Lynne Stewart to decades in prison, the U.S. government will appeal again
and send the case right back to the Second Circuit, at which time these
Second Circuit judges will take matters into their own hands and mandate a
sentence of decades in prison.

On the basis of this speech, these judges label Lynne a “recidivist enhancer
of terror” and a “perjurer.” Rarely has their been so brazen an abandonment
of judicial impartiality and respect for the law as exhibited by these
hanging judges of the Second Circuit.

It is a measure of the subversion of the entire judicial process and of
constitutional protections and basic democratic rights that these judges
emulate Alice in Wonderland with scarcely veiled threats to Judge Koeltl as
they proclaim “Off with her head!”

Lynne Stewart at 70 years of age has survived cancer, suffers from high
blood pressure, has been deprived of her medication and denied the surgery
that was scheduled prior to her being remanded to prison in a crass display
of contempt for common decency.

The Second Circuit judges revoked her bail in November 2009 ignoring the
fact that her Appeal remains under review and a potential Appeal to the
Supreme Court is pending.

∑ Mobilize in defense of Lynne Stewart and against the architecture of the
fascist State under rapid construction in America.
∑ Proclaim that Lynne Stewart’s is the Dreyfus Case of our time and that
today as then a criminal state wages wars of genocide abroad and
authoritarian repression at home while seeking to scapegoat a heroic
defender of the oppressed, thus betraying the legacy of the American
revolution.

∑ Organize large numbers of people to gather outside and inside Judge
Koeltl’s Courtroom at 500 Pearl Street in lower Manhattan when Lynne
Stewart is scheduled to be re-sentenced on July 15.

∑ Write personal letters to Judge Koeltl opposing the destruction of
democratic rights and the threat to all attorneys embodied in the reckless
persecution and prosecution of Lynne Stewart

∑ Remind the Judge that Lynne Stewart has, in his own words, been a national
treasure reflecting a lifetime of devoted public service and that he should
treat her accordingly and reserve draconian sentencing for the torturers and
the wagers of wars of aggression.

∑ Call upon Judge Koeltl to defy attempts by judges on the Second Circuit to
usurp his own proper judgment and jurisdiction by dictating a vengeful
sentence that is a death sentence upon the U.S. constitution.

∑ Write accordingly directly to: The Honorable Judge John G. Koeltl, United
States District Judge, Southern District of New York, 500 Pearl Street, New
York, N.Y. 10013.

∑ Email copies of your letter to Judge Koeltl to Ralph Poynter and Lynne
Stewart at Ralph.Poynter [at] yahoo.com /
info [at] lynnestewart.org./takingaim [at] pacbell.net and obtain ongoing information.

∑ Mail a copy of your letter to Judge Koeltl to the Lynne Stewart Defense
Committee at 350 Broadway, Suite 700, N.Y., N.Y. 10013

TAKING AIM
with
Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
email: rbs1 [at] pacbell.net