Sympathy for the devil…bet this wouldn't occur if she had supported a non preferred group

Misplaced Compassion For Blind Sheik Lawyer Lynne Stewart

War On Terror: At the administration's request, a New York federal judge granted a "compassionate release" from prison for the radical lawyer convicted of helping a terrorist communicate with his followers in Egypt.

Lynne Stewart's release last week by U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl came after a request from the director of the Bureau of Prisons through the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, no doubt with the consent of higher-ups at the Department of Justice.

The 74-year-old Stewart was not scheduled for release until August 2018, but prosecutors say she suffers from recurrent stage-four breast cancer and has been given 18 months to live. This is longer than the victims of her client — Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheik" who was the architect of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 that left six people dead and more than a thousand injured — ever got.

She was found guilty in 2005 of charges she had illegally "facilitated and concealed communications" between Rahman and his fellow terrorists. After one of those communications from the leader of the terrorist group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, some 60 people, including tourists, were massacred in Luxor, Egypt, in 1997.

In addition to masterminding the 1993 attack, Rahman also had planned to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the George Washington Bridge in New York City, as well as assassinate Egypt's president.

National Lawyers Guild member Stewart was recruited to defend Rahman by LBJ's former attorney general, Ramsey Clark, who, among other claims to infamy, volunteered to help defend Saddam Hussein, saying the mass murderer was a victim of "selective prosecution."

Stewart, however, was not content merely to be of counsel. She made the conscious decision to help Rahman in his terrorist activities and to help him carry out his murderous agenda from prison by aiding in the sending of messages to terrorist supporters in Egypt.

On the stand, she proclaimed support for Rahman's violent cause, saying: "I believe that entrenched institutions will not be changed except by violence. I believe in the politics that lead to violence being exerted by people on their own behalf."

Stewart was initially sentenced to just 28 months in prison, significantly less than the 30 years prosecutors asked for. Her sentence would later be extended to 10 years. The judge who gave her the slap on the wrist was none other than the Clinton-appointed Judge Koeltl. It was the Clinton administration that made the tragic mistake of treating the first World Trade Center bombing as a law enforcement matter and not a terrorist attack.

Koeltl actually praised Stewart: "By providing a criminal defense to the poor, the disadvantaged and unpopular over three decades," he said, "it is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Stewart performed a public service not only to her clients but to the nation."

We are in no position to judge her medical condition, but we are reminded of the case of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.

His compassionate release occurred after doctors said he had just three months to live. He survived for two years and three months before dying at age 60.

We believe compassion should be reserved for the victims of these terrorists, the maimed and the dead whose families grieve without judicial sympathy. Not for terrorists and their allies.