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BREAKING NEWS, Oct. 16—As
we go to press, Lynne Stewart has been sentenced in a New York City federal
courtroom to 28 months in prison, far less than the 30 years the
government was seeking.
NEW YORK—Mackler's campaign has championed the defense
efforts of progressive attorney Lynne Stewart, who faces a 30-year prison
sentence as a result of her frame-up trial and conviction on charges of
"conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism."
The charges stemmed from Stewart's 1995
courtroom defense of the "blind sheik," Omar Abdel Rachman, and
Stewart's associated issuance of a press release relating Rachman's views
on the U.S.-backed Egyptian dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
Stewart is out on bail pending her Oct.
16 sentencing hearing. She twice joined Mackler at Socialist
Action-sponsored meetings in New York to lend support to his Senate
campaign.
"Lynne's only 'crime'," said
Mackler, "was to courageously defend her client. The real criminals
in Lynne's case are the government prosecutors, modern-day witch hunters
who trampled on her rights, illegally wiretapped Stewart and her
co-defendents some 80,000 times, and used the hysteria surrounding the
9/11 events to in effect associate Stewart with bin Laden and railroad
her to prison.
"My opponent, Dianne
Feinstein," said Mackler, "co-sponsored new and reactionary
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wire-tapping legislation that was
approved by Congress on Sept. 13, 2006.
“What we're seeing today, with Lynne's
case and government spying more generally, is an unprecedented war on
civil liberties at home matched by the murderous wars abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's that way with every U.S. war for plunder and profit. Repression
abroad means repression at home.”
While in New York Mackler attended a
Sept. 25 Federal District Court hearing presided over by Judge John
Koeltl. The hearing concerned motions filed by Lynne Stewart concerning
her request to the government to affirm or deny that it had illegally
spied on Stewart's strategy sessions with her attorneys as she prepared
for her trial. Three federal district courts have already affirmed that
such spying is patently in violation of constitutionally protected rights
regarding attorney-client relations.
The government prosecutor responded to
Stewart's demands by refusing to either affirm or deny that the
government has spied on Stewart. To do so, said the government's
attorneys, would be to reveal details of the government's secret
surveillance programs and thereby threaten the "national security
interests" of the United States.
Citing chapter and verse from various new
and reactionary laws, the prosecutor insisted on the government’s right
to unimpeded spying on virtually everyone.
If Stewart's motions to compel the
government to admit that it spied on her during her preparations for
trial are successful, the result could be the nullification of the guilty
verdict that resulted from Stewart's 2005 frame-up trial. A decision from
Judge Koeltl, who queried both attorneys as to the relevance of the laws
and cases in dispute, is expected momentarily.
Meanwhile, Stewart's Oct. 16 sentencing hearing will
witness Judge Koeltl decision to either affirm the government's
recommendation that Stewart be sentenced to 30 years in prison or to
accept the recommendation of Lynne's defense team that she receive no
prison time or a "non-custodial" sentence.
Current law allows for Koeltl to use his
"discretion" as to the length of Stewart's sentence and as to
whether she will be granted bail pending her appeal to the next level of
the federal courts.
Mackler, West Coast coordinator of
Stewart's defense, will return to New York to attend Stewart's sentencing
hearing and to speak at a 4-6 p.m. rally for Stewart at Riverside Church
on Oct. 15. He will be joined on the platform by a long list of prominent
defenders of civil and democratic rights.
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