TerrorismGovt.: lawyer jailed for helping imprisoned terrorist not entitled to medical early release
The government told U.S. District Judge John Koeltl that he does not have the authority to release an ailing disbarred civil rights lawyer who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for allowing a imprisoned Egyptian sheik to communicate with his followers. Lynne Stewart, 73, is suffering a recurrence of her breast cancer, but the government says that she is not telling the truth when she says she has only eighteen months to live.
Cancer-stricken Lynne Stewart not entitled to early medical release // Source: facebook.com
The government told U.S. District Judge John Koeltl, that he does not have the authority to release an ailing disbarred civil rights lawyer who is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for allowing a imprisoned Egyptian sheik to communicate with his followers.
The Washington Post reports that prosecutors want a request by Lynne Stewart’s lawyers for her to be released so she can fight terminal cancer to be rejected, and argued that Koeltl does not have the power to change her term of imprisonment unless the Bureau of Prisons (BoP) requests it.
Stewart, 73, was imprisoned in 2009 for relaying a secret message from her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, to his followers, in violation of special administrative efforts taken to ensure he had no communication with his followers.
Abdel-Rahman is currently serving a life sentence for planning to blow up several New York landmarks and plotting to assassinate then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Prosecutors reminded the judge of Stewart’s crime, saying she “materially assisted terrorists who were striving to kill people outside the United States and who only through fortuity failed in achieving their murderous objectives — although Stewart and her co-defendants’ actions came perilously close to unleashing a violent terrorist attack.”
Stewart’s lawyers asked Koeltl to free the 73-year old after the BoP rejected a similar request in June. The BoP rejected her request for early release after determining Stewart has more than eighteen months to live, her claims notwithstanding. Stewart’s lawyers, however, say her condition is “rapidly deteriorating” and the breast cancer she has will soon take her.
Stewart is currently being held at the Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. She was first diagnosed with cancer in 2005, but it was rediscovered last summer.
A hearing on her release request will be held Thursday.
