'A secret ... channel'Prosecutors say lawyer for sheik imprisoned in '93 [View All]

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Prosecutors say lawyer for sheik imprisoned in '93 WTC bombing enabled client to communicate with followers who then carried out terrorist

BY PATRICIA HURTADO
STAFF WRITER

October 18, 2004


Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman is blind and diabetic and has been held incommunicado in federal prison for seven years after convictions for inciting followers to carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a foiled plot to bomb New York landmarks.

Yet, during those seven years, Abdel-Rahman was able to get out his incendiary message to militant followers, with deadly results, through his lawyer, Lynne Stewart, and two others, the government has said in a five-month trial in federal court in Manhattan.

Prosecutors have cited violence and threats carried out in the name of the sheik: the 1997 massacre of 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt; kidnappings of 73 tourists in the Philippines in 2000; the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen; and a threat by terrorist Mustafa Hamza to kidnap Americans in retaliation for Abdel-Rahman's incarceration.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Morvillo has pointed to Stewart and her co-defendants, Mohammed Yousry, an Arabic interpreter, and Ahmed Sattar, a U.S. postal worker and paralegal for the sheik in his 1995 trial, as being the "secret underground communications channel" that helped Abdel-Rahman pass messages to his followers in the Islamic Group, an Egypt-based terrorist organization.

All three have pleaded not guilty. If convicted, Stewart and Yousry face up to 10 years in prison. Sattar, who is charged in a separate conspiracy to kill and kidnap Americans, faces up to life imprisonment if convicted.
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