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Radical attorney doesn't look the part Washington Post Wednesday, April 10, 2002 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/10/MN169823.DTL
New York -- A short, gray-haired grandmother who often has a New York Mets cap perched atop her head, Lynne Stewart does not fit the stereotypical image of a radical attorney.
But Stewart, a former librarian, has defended a who's who of the radical chic during the past two decades. Her clients range from Weather Underground leaders to mob hit man and snitch Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
Now, the 62-year-old attorney stands accused of taking the role of terrorist's accomplice. She stood ramrod straight in federal court yesterday and declared herself "emphatically not guilty" of the charges as a gaggle of her defense attorneys watched from a crowded courtroom viewing area.
To a person, these attorneys describe Stewart as a woman of passionate politics, whose revolutionary ardor is little diminished since her youth. But they say that charges of aiding a terrorist organization stand at odds with all they know about her.
"She has the demeanor of your kindergarten teacher, but she was a brilliant courtroom advocate," says Ronald Kuby, a defense attorney and protege of William Kunstler, the late grand vizier of the radical legal left. "She's the bravest and strongest advocate for the downtrodden."
Even opponents profess respect for this mild-mannered woman. A former prosecutor describes a nuts-and-bolts attorney who always came to court prepared.
Kuby and other colleagues speculated that her clients might have used Stewart, who does not speak Arabic. "Little did she realize," Kuby said, "that when she was saying, 'So tell me, Sheik Omar, should I file the papers', her interpreter was saying: 'So tell me, Sheik Omar, when should we smite the infidel?' "
That said, Stewart is a most committed radical and has rarely shied from defense of even violent acts of resistance to what she sees as oppressive state power.
Still, her decision to represent Rahman was not universally supported by this city's large left- wing defense bar. Some questioned lending her legal talents to a man who yearns to create a theocracy that would likely crush lawyers such as herself.
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