New York lawyer charged with aiding terrorist group

An American lawyer has been charged with aiding an Islamist terrorist organisation by passing messages from jail on behalf of the group's leader.

The charges, announced yesterday by the US attorney general, John Ashcroft, resulted from a surveillance operation carried out in the prison where the leader of the Egyptian-based Islamic Group is held.

Lynne Stewart, a Manhattan-based attorney, was arrested yesterday and her office searched by FBI agents. She had represented Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman at his trial for plotting to cause five explosions in New York in the 1990s and for conspiring to murder the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

The indictment alleges that Ms Stewart, who became a familiar figure in the news during Rahman's trial in 1995, took part in "unlawful communications with the sheikh" which occurred during prison visits and telephone calls.

At a press conference, Mr Ashcroft suggested that during her jail visits, Ms Stewart deliberately spoke loudly in English to mask what was being said as Rahman and others held conversations in Arabic. The attorney general claimed that Ms Stewart had violated a signed agreement about communications with her client.

Also charged with Ms Stewart was Mohammed Yousry, an Arabic translator; Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a Staten Island man described as a "surrogate" for Rahman; and Yassir Al-Sirri, the former head of the London-based Islamic Observation Centre.

The indictment alleges that in October 2000, Rahman issued an edict which called on "scholars everywhere in the Muslim world to do their part and issue a unanimous fatwa that urges the Muslim nation to fight the Jews and kill them wherever they are".

The US "will not look the other way" before this "message of hate", Mr Ashcroft said.

He said only 16 of the 158,000 federal prisoners were having their meetings with their attorneys monitored.

Rahman had used Ms Stewart to communicate with the outside world when he was specifically forbidden to do so, Mr Ashcroft said. Since the early 90s the sheikh had directed terrorist attacks throughout the world, he added.

He also claimed Ms Stewart had falsely said that Rahman was being denied his medication when she knew this to be untrue.

Rahman, 63, was among 10 defendants convicted in 1995 in New York of a conspiracy to bomb the UN, the FBI headquarters in Manhattan and two tunnels and a bridge connecting New Jersey and New York. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.