Human Rights Attorney Lynne Stewart Speaks Out As She Heads To Courthouse for Sentencing

Stewart was convicted of smuggling out messages from her jailed client - Shiekh Omar Abdel Rahman - also known as the blind sheikh - who is serving a life sentence on terror-related charges. Most notably, Stewart was convicted of helping Rahman contact followers in Egypt with messages that could have ended a cease-fire there and ignited violence. Stewart’s co-defendants - Ahmed Sattar, a postal worker who acted as a paralegal for Abdel-Rahman, and Mohammed Yousry - an Arabic translator, were also convicted of all charges against them. This was the first time that the federal government prosecuted a defense attorney in a terrorism case.

The seven-month trial was held in the same New York federal courthouse, just blocks from our firehouse studio, where the Rosenbergs were tried for conspiracy to commit espionage more than a half century ago. It featured very few witnesses as the government’s case was based primarily on transcripts from more than 85,000 secretly recorded audio and video clips of meetings between Stewart and her client as well as the home phone of Ahmed Abdel Sattar.

Last month, Stewart wrote a personal letter to the court and acknowledged for the first time that she knowingly violated prison rules and was careless, overemotional and politically naive in her representation of her client... She has asked for leniency from the court.

And Lynne Stewart joins me now here in the studio, just hours before her sentencing.

* Lynne Stewart, human rights attorney

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