Lefty lawyer indicted in bizarre jihad case; far-left activists aren't satisfied giving legal counsel to terrorists. Recent indictments indicate that some may be helping to smuggle kill orders from prison cells

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 6, 2002 | by J. Michael Waller

That statement (and possibly others), according to the federal indictment, shows that Stewart served as a willing transmission belt for Rahman's orders, effectively freeing his terrorist organization to resume violence without his active command.

While Rahman and Yousry discussed the declaration in a May 2000 prison meeting, "Stewart took affirmative steps to conceal the conversation from prison guards, making extraneous comments in English to mask the Arabic conversation between Rahman and Yousry," Ashcroft said. "Following the meeting, and in further violation of the Special Administrative Measures to which she had agreed, Stewart is charged with announcing to the news media that Rahman had withdrawn his support for the cease-fire."

It came at a crucial time for the terrorists. According to the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram, "Abdel-Rahman's statement against continuing the truce followed an intense week of debate among top Gama'a [Islamic Group] figures at home and abroad on whether or not the clandestine group should completely renounce armed struggle." The statement was far more extreme than the terrorists' own position back home and shocked Islamic Group leaders.

Al-Ahram reported at the time: "In Egypt, jailed Gama'a leaders, via their lawyer Montasser El-Zayyat, responded to Abdel-Rahman's statement by pointing out that the government has released approximately 2,500 detained militants and halted extrajudicial killings, mass arrests and military trials." Other Egyptian terrorist leaders, including one who had received political asylum in Germany, disagreed with Rahman, saying the cessation of violence was working in getting their people out of Egypt's prisons. Someone writing in Rahman's name, apparently Stewart or the interpreter, e-mailed Al-Ahram, stating, "I did not cancel the cease-fire initiative, but I did withdraw my support for it and made my opinion clear. I left it to my brothers [in Egypt] to look at it and consider what it is worth, as they know the reality better."

As one investigator commented, "That's very lawyerly stuff." The jihadists now were free to do as they wished with their spiritual leader's blessing. Not that subtlety was at issue. According to an October 2000 directive smuggled out from the imprisoned sheik and titled "Mandating the Bloodshed of Israelis Everywhere," says the indictment, Rahman ordered his followers to "kill [Jews] wherever they are."

If convicted of acting as a messenger of terrorist communications, what the Justice Department calls providing "material support of a terrorist organization," the 62-year-old Stewart could face as many as 20 years in prison under emergency antiterrorism legislation.

All of which is serious business and raises questions about it being part of a pattern. For instance, Stewart's own defense attorney, Susan Tipograph, has been suspected of similarly abusing her attorney-client relationships to help convicted terrorists. A Western Goals Foundation report from 1981 identifies Tipograph as a member of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and of the May 19 Communist Organization, an offshoot of the Weather Underground terrorist group that took its name from the joint birthday of Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X. Investigators suspected Tipograph of exploiting the confidentiality privileges of a defense attorney to help at least two of her terrorist clients escape from prison.