Lawyer convicted of aiding terrorists

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NEW YORK (AP) -- A veteran civil rights lawyer was convicted yesterday of smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients -- a radical Egyptian sheik -- to his terrorist followers on the outside.

The jury deliberated 13 days during the past month before convicting Lynne Stewart, 65, who testified during her trial that she believed violence was necessary to rid America of its "entrenched, voracious type of capitalism."

Stewart was found guilty of charges that include conspiracy, giving material support to terrorists and defrauding the U.S. government. A left-wing activist known for representing radicals and revolutionaries in her 30 years on the New York legal scene, she faces up to 20 years in prison.

The jury also convicted a U.S. postal worker, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, of plotting to "kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country" by publishing an edict urging the killing of Jews and their supporters. A third defendant, Arabic interpreter Mohamed Yousry, was convicted of providing material support to terrorists. Sattar faces life in prison, and Yousry faces up to 20 years.

Stewart was the attorney for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind man sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for conspiring to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and destroy several New York landmarks, including the U.N. building and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels. Stewart's co-defendants also had close ties to Abdel-Rahman.

Prosecutors said Stewart and the others carried messages between the sheik and senior members of an Egyptian-based terrorist organization, helping spread Abdel-Rahman's venomous call to kill those who did not subscribe to his extremist interpretation of Islamic law.

At the time, the sheik was in solitary confinement in Minnesota under special prison rules to keep him from communicating with anyone except his wife and his attorneys.

Minutes before the verdict was read, Stewart said she felt "nervous". "I'm scared, worried," she added. When she heard the pronouncement, Stewart began shaking her head and wiping her eyes. The courtroom was filled with her supporters, who gasped. She will remain free on bail, but must stay in New York, until her July 15 sentencing.

The trial focused attention on the line between zealous advocacy and criminal behavior by a lawyer. Some defense attorneys saw the case as a government warning to attorneys to tread carefully in terrorism cases.

Prosecutor Andrew Dember argued that Stewart and her co-defendants essentially "broke Abdel-Rahman out of jail, made him available to the worst kind of criminal we find in this world -- terrorists."

Stewart, who once represented Weather Underground radicals and mob turncoat Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, repeatedly declared her innocence, maintaining that she was unfairly targeted by overzealous prosecutors.

But she also testified that she believed violence was sometimes necessary to achieve justice: "To rid ourselves of the entrenched, voracious type of capitalism that is in this country that perpetuates sexism and racism, I don't think that can come nonviolently."