JURIST - Paper Chase: Charges filed against lawyer accused of helping terrorist client

This is Wednesday's national security law news... New charges have been filed against a New York civil rights lawyer who is accused of helping a jailed terrorist communicate with followers. The government announced the charges today, four months after a judge threw out the most serious of the original counts. Lawyer Lynne Stewart is accused to helping Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is serving a life sentence for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks and assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, according to the Associated Press. Stewart, former US postal worker Ahmed Abdel Sattar and translator Mohammed Yousry are accused of relaying messages from Abdel-Rahman to a terrorist group based in Egypt. All three have pleaded innocent. The Justice Department's press release on the indictments is available here.... Attorney General John Ashcroft defended the decision to deport a Canadian citizen to Syria to his Canadian counterpart on Wednesday. Ashcroft told Solicitor General Wayne Easter that the US broke no laws and was acting in its national interest when it deported Maher Arar to Syria and not to Canada. Ashcroft and Easter said the controversy over Maher Arar should not hinder terrorism cooperation between the two countries.... Tomorrow's Los Angeles Times features a special report about the shifting strategy of the al-Qaida network. The article examines a number of suicide bombings that indicate al-Qaida has survived by decentralizing. The frequency of recent attacks suggests that the organization has become something of a terrorism "brand name."

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