The wheels of justice, goes the saying, grind slowly. That was certainly the case for disbarred defense attorney and abettor of terrorism Lynne Stewart. A Manhattan federal appeals court upheld Stewart’s 2005 conviction for assisting her terrorist client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Stewart helped smuggle messages from the imprisoned radical cleric to his friends in the Egyptian terrorist group al-Gama’a.
These messages, according the Second Circuit, included a fatwa urging his followers to “fight the Jews by all possible means of Jihad, either by killing them as individuals or by targeting their interests and their advocates, as much as they can.” It also gave orders to break a cease-fire between the terror group and the Egyptian government, which lead to mass murder.
According to the Second Circuit opinion:
“In November 1997…a group associated with al-Gama’a attacked, killed and mutilated the bodies of more than sixty tourists, guides and guards at the Hatchepsut Temple in Luxor Egypt.”
On a personal note, I had been home only a few weeks from a trip to Egypt when this tourist massacre occurred.
The October 12, 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, which killed 17 and wounded 39, was believed to be a reprisal for Rahman’s incarceration.
And who is attorney Lynne Stewart? In a New York Times profile, Stewart was quoted as saying:
“I don’t believe in anarchist violence but in directed violence. That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions and accompanied by popular support.”
It’s odd to hear someone who purports to defend the rule of law, instead, defend mob violence. In another interview with Monthly Review, Stewart fleshed out her worldview more clearly:
“I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel [Castro] locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution.”
Now, President Obama plans to bring jihadist war criminals to our shores and grant them Constitutional rights and eager lawyers itching to defend them. The president said:
“Although the security issues presented by terrorism cases can never be minimized, our marshals, our court security officers, and our prison officials have extensive experience and training in dealing with dangerous defendants and I am quite sure they can meet the security challenges posed by this case.”
Obama failed to mention the threat posed to the country and its people by lawyers in league with their terrorist clients. It’s chilling to recall that Stewart was convicted for aiding terrorists back in 2005 and gamed the legal system, living free while her appeals made their way up the legal food chain. What damage did she manage to do these last four years while the appellate process ran its course?
Back in 2008 (way back during the Bush administration) a statement issued by Anthony D. Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), guaranteed the organization’s legal aid for terrorist war criminals:
“…The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have taken on the task of assembling defense teams to be available to assist in the representation of those Guantánamo detainees who have been charged under the Military Commissions Act, subject to the detainees’ consent.”
Romero then heralded his assembled legal minds for their “unparalleled expertise in national security issues who have been tapped by the ACLU and NACDL, there are more than 20 lawyers at the ACLU who stand ready to assist with the effort. The ACLU/NACDL cooperating lawyers have defended cases such as those involving…Lynne Stewart…”
Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher famously said, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Not if they kill us first.
– Mr. Curmudgeon
