Facing Up To 30 Years in Prison, Civil Rights Attorney Lynne Stewart Speaks Out As She Heads To Courthouse for Sentencing
LYNNE STEWART: I’m stressed, but I am beneficial of a large outpouring of support and love, recognition of my career as a lawyer in this city -- my representation of the poor, of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless, if you will, for over 30 years -- that happened last night at Riverside Church and at other meetings all week long, St. Mark’s, up in Harlem, we had an outpouring as well. So I’m buoyed by the people who believe in me, the people who know that everything I did, I did as a lawyer, not as a terrorist, as the government would have people believe.
LYNNE STEWART: Yes. You know, the government has put in what my dear friend Bill Kunstler used to call “weasel words,” words that don’t state the exact facts but really pull a kind of reaction. So they use words like “smuggled out messages.” We would visit the Sheik. He would tell us, he would dictate to us letters. He would dictate to us press releases.
The real thrust of my conviction is that I made a press release very openly to Reuters, no secret, nothing under the bra straps, and that press release called for a reconsideration, not an end to the ceasefire, but a reconsideration of a unilateral ceasefire that the Sheik's group, which he of course had not been a member of for ten years at the time he made the release, had made in Egypt. Ramsey Clark had announced his original position, which was in support of the ceasefire. Ramsey Clark never heard from the government at all. I made the press release saying, “I think you should reconsider this ceasefire,” and a year-and-a-half later, I was indicted.
LYNNE STEWART: Yes. I’m afraid that if you only read the New York Times, you may get the wrong impression. It’s not a craven, begging letter. I am still very sure of my principled stand in this whole matter, that everything I did, I did as a lawyer, that I never intended to aid my client's cause. I intended to aid this man, this man who was in terrible isolation.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/16/143257