From “Discover the Networks”:
LYNNE STEWART
Their friendship, along with Stewart’s counsel, continued after Rahman was imprisoned at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota. That is where Stewart, a self-proclaimed “radical activist attorney” who supporters argue is no more than a kindly 62-year-old grandmother, crossed the line into criminality. Throughout 2000, FBI agents, working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), secretly videotaped Stewart’s legal visits with Rahman and wiretapped telephone conversations between the two. Due to federal authorities’ concerns over Rahman’s attempts to issue fatwahs and direct further the Islamic Group’s activities from prison, Stewart had to agree to a Special Administrative Measure (SAM) in order to gain access to him. The SAM meant that Stewart could only talk to Rahman about legal matters and barred her from conveying messages from the Sheikh to anyone in the outside world, including his family, friends and the media. The SAM did, however, allow an Arabic translator, Mohammed Yousry, to accompany Stewart on her visits with the Sheikh.
It was through Yousry that Rahman, according to a 19-page indictment issued by federal agents, delivered messages in Arabic to a Staten Island-based postal worker named Ahmed Abdel Sattar. While Yousry was a go-between for Rahman and Sattar, Sattar in turn facilitated communication between Rahman and Islamic Group representatives in the Middle East. Sattar, through faxes and telephone conversations, informed Islamic Group members abroad of the Sheikh’s directives and desires; they in turn carried them out.
Despite the Sheikh’s incarceration, the Islamic Group still considers him its sole spiritual leader, a fact made brutally clear in 1997 when six assassins shot and stabbed 58 tourists and four Egyptians to death in Luxor, Egypt. Members of the Islamic Group later claimed responsibility for this murderous rampage, saying it was done to force authorities to release Rahman from prison in the United States. Not to be outdone, Osama bin Laden and a few of his fellow Al-Qaeda operatives appeared on Al-Jazeera television in September 2000 vowing to wage a jihad to end Rahman’s incarceration (one of the men extolled viewers to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood”). The suicide bombing of the American navy destroyer U.S.S. Cole occurred just one month after this broadcast. That attack, which took place in Yemen and killed over 17 U.S. sailors, was explained by Sattar’s Mid-east contacts as a warning to the U.S. government to free Rahman.
The messenger role played by both Yousry and Sattar made the two irreplaceable cogs in the Islamic Group’s militant mission. But without Stewart, correspondence with the Sheikh would have been nonexistent. Stewart not only allowed Yousry to communicate privately with the Sheikh in Arabic, she encouraged and actively aided the two men’s efforts to conduct IG business behind bars. An F.B.I. affidavit prepared by agent Kimberley Whittle detailed the cunning measures Stewart resorted to during her prison visits in order to protect Rahman and assist the Islamic Group’s homicidal agenda. According to the affidavit, Stewart “made random comments out loud for the [prison] guards to hear in order to conceal the real conversation” between Rahman and Yousry. During one such exchange, Stewart—all the while pretending to take notes in her legal pad—misled nearby guards by loudly inserting the nonsensical phrase, “Yes, the um…I am talking to you about…him going out on a, uh, chocolate eh…heart attack here” into a discussion between Rahman and Yousry. A wiretap captured Stewart, Rahman and Yousry joking afterwards about Stewart’s deception, with the aging Leftist lawyer saying she could “get an award for it,” and the Sheikh adding, “as long as the government is using secret evidence we will use secret doves.”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.com/individualProfile.asp?indid=861
Thanks, Sam Hill your information about Lynne Stewart is most timely given the stupid verdict today.