This is a confusion based on lack of knowledge of the law. Therea re a few things other people know more about than you, Yoshie. I accept that you know lots more about most things than me, but this is what I do. Tigar is not trying the earlier case agaisnt the Sheik. He is not mking Stewart's defense (now appeal) rest on the hopeless(from a legal point of view) proposition that the Sheik is innocent of the charges of which he was convicted. That would be perilously close to malpractice. As you infact observe, it si a confusion to run together the Sheik's earlier (pre 1993) conspiring to blwo up variosu buiding and kill people with his more recent statements about the cease fire.
The relevant speech of the Sheik is the postconviction speach that Stewart reported to the press in violation of the gag order. That is speech which, whether or not it is protected, is not the basis of crominal chages, much leess a conviction, of the Sheik. So Tigar is arguing, quite naturally, that when Stewart broke the gag order she was not offering material aid to terrorism because these speech she reported was not an incitement to immanent lawless activity. To put is another way, not all speech by someone who is convicted for uttering uprotected incitement, soliciattion, and conspiratorial statements falls in that category.
Again, though, the focus is in Stewart. Don't defend the Sheik. Defend his right to due process, which he got. To representation -- and to represenation withour criminal prosecution of his lawyers. We do not, DO NOT, want to suggest that this guy is a champion of the left. He's )on your story) an antisemitic theocrtativ reactionary who advocates mass murder (abstractly). According to the jury, he's guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and terrorist acts. He si not oir friend. Stewart si our friend. Stick to essentials.
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Justin wrote:
> >I don't think this is a particularly good test case
> for the limits
> >of protected political speech. Stewart is a much
> better case.
>
> As far as the US government is concerned, though,
> the charges against
> Lynne Stewart are inextricably tied up with the
> status of Sheik Omar
> Abdel Rahman's speech. Look at the superceding
> indictment at
>
<http://www.lynnestewart.org/IndictmentSuperceding.pdf>,
> and you will
> see that the prosecution begins by repeating the
> case against Rahman,
> seeking to establish, in the eyes of the jury in the
> case of Stewart
> and her co-defendants, that he is the charismatic
> leader of a
> terrorist conspiracy and that any statement of his
> concerning the use
> of force threatens to induce an act of terrorism.
> The first eleven
> pages of the superceding indictment discuss nothing
> but Rahman, even
> though he is not a defendant in this case. The
> government's
> imposition of Special Administrative Measures, which
> Stewart was
> accused of violating, was also based upon the same
> rationale: "The
> stated purpose of the SAMs was to protect 'persons
> against the risk
> of death or serious bodily injury' that could result
> if Abdel Rahman
> were free 'to communicate (send or receive)
> terrorist information'"
>
(<http://www.lynnestewart.org/IndictmentSuperceding.pdf>,
> November
> 19, 2003, p. 11). The government's case against
> Stewart makes much
> of the following acts: her enabling Rahman to
> dictate "letters to
> [translator Mohammed] YOUSRY _indicating that_ he
> did not support the
> cease-fire and calling for the Islamic Group, to
> reevaluate the
> cease-fire"
>
(<http://www.lynnestewart.org/IndictmentSuperceding.pdf>,
>
> p. 19); and her release of "a statement to the press
> that quoted
> Abdel Rahman as stating that he 'is withdrawing his
> support for the
> cease-fire that currently exists'"
>
(<http://www.lynnestewart.org/IndictmentSuperceding.pdf>,
> p. 20).
> The main theory in which the indictment is framed is
> that such acts
> -- enabling Rahman's communication with persons
> other than his
> immediate family members, his attorneys, and their
> translator --
> constituted both a conspiracy to provide material
> support to
> terrorist activity and provision and concealment of
> it, given the
> nature of his social position and status of his
> words.
>
> That being the case, the defense in the Stewart case
> is obliged to
> argue against the government's interpretations of
> who Rahman is and
> what his words -- at least the ones at stake in this
> case -- meant.
>
> Among other things, Michael Tigar questioned the
> government's
> inchoate characterization of Rahman
>
(<http://www.lynnestewart.org/StewartMtnDismissMemoSupport.pdf>)
> and
> made an argument that the Rahman's speech in
> question was not "a
> command to pick up the guns," evidenced by the fact
> that "[n]obody
> picked one up":
>
> <blockquote>Then Ms. Stewart on the 14th of June
> 2000 talks to Mr.
> Salaheddin and says that the Sheikh withdraws his
> support for the
> initiative or cease fire or whatever, withdraws his
> support.
>
> Let's take it that indeed those are the exact words
> that she said.
> Let's understand the context in which the Sheikh is
> told in prison
> that the government has once again started killing
> people and
> summarily executing them and taking hostages, and
> minors are being
> tried by military courts and so on.
>
> What does that lead to, your Honor? The government
> promised us that
> we were going to get a command to pick up the guns.
> Nobody in Egypt
> interpreted it as a command to pick up a gun in the
> sense that nobody
> picked one up. The first thing that happened was
> that Montasser
> al-Zayyat and the brother in prison said that can't
> be impossible.
> Six days later there is a clarification where the
> Sheikh says, I'm
> not supporting this thing anymore, but I certainly
> didn't cancel it.
>
> And then in one of these wonderful vindications of
> John Stewart
> Mills, a theory of freedom of expression, more
> speech does the job.
> Because in fact the questions that Sheikh Omar Abdel
> Rahman was
> quoted by Ms. Stewart as raising leads to a
> reaffirmation of the
> initiative. That's the First Amendment.
>
>
<http://www.lynnestewart.org/rule29.html></blockquote>
>
> The argument is valid, whether or not Rahman was
> actually a seditious
> conspirator against the United States and a
> solicitor of the murder
> of Hosni Mubarak before his conviction and
> imprisonment. However, if
> jurors believed what the government said about
> Rahman and thought
> that anything concerning violence mentioned by him
> must always be an
> order for his followers to commit an unlawful act of
> violence -- as
> at least some of the jurors in the Stewart case
> appeared to fear --
> it would be hard to persuade them to think otherwise
> in this
> particular instance.
> --
> Yoshie
>
> * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
> * Bring Them Home Now!
> <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/>
> * Calendars of Events in Columbus:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
> <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, &
> <http://www.cpanews.org/>
> * Student International Forum:
> <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
> * Committee for Justice in Palestine:
> <http://www.osudivest.org/>
> * Al-Awda-Ohio:
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
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