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Appeals court orders lawyer to serve time

By BOB VON STERNBERG, Star Tribune

Last update: November 17, 2009 - 10:58 PM

A federal appeals court has ordered a civil rights lawyer convicted in a terrorism case that originated in Minnesota to begin serving her prison sentence.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan today also upheld Lynne Stewart's conviction, which was based in part on illegally aiding her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, during a visit with him at the federal prison in Rochester, Minn., in May 2000.

She was convicted of smuggling messages between Abdel-Rahman and a terrorist group.

Stewart was sentenced to a little more than two years in prison.

The appeals court also ordered the trial judge to reconsider the length of her sentence, because the judge didn't consider whether she committed perjury at trial.

Abdel-Rahman was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and to bomb New York City sites, including the United Nations and FBI offices. Six of his associates were convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Starting in 1997, Stewart visited Abdel-Rahman at the Rochester prison more than a half-dozen times. On May 20, 2000, she was accused of distracting guards so Abdel-Rahman could pass terrorist instructions to an Arabic translator and of later issuing a news release for the sheik to a Cairo news service.

Stewart consistently maintained her innocence, calling herself "the cover girl or the poster child of [then-Attorney General John] Ashcroft's assault on the Bill of Rights," in a 2002 interview with the Star Tribune.

A well-known firebrand, left-wing activist who represented radicals and revolutionaries for 30 years, Stewart was convicted in 2005.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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