NEW YORK, April 9 (UPI) -- Four associates of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, including his American lawyer, were indicted Tuesday on charges of helping the "blind sheik" conduct terrorist activities from his prison cell.
In announcing the indictment in New York, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in prepared remarks that Abdel Rahman was "a leader of the designated terrorist organization, the Islamic Group."
Ashcroft said the Islamic Group is affiliated with al Qaida, the organization believed responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The attorney general said he was invoking, for the first time, a Justice Department policy allowing officials to monitor attorney-client conversations, if department officials believed the conversations were being used to further terrorism.
From now on, Ashcroft said, that policy will apply to Abdel Rahman and his attorneys.
Abdel Rahman has been serving a life sentence since 1995 for various acts of terror. He was also accused of plotting to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.
The blind cleric earlier entered the United States from Egypt after claiming political asylum.
"Today's indictment charges four individuals -- including Rahman's lawyer, a United States citizen -- with aiding Sheik Abdel Rahman in continuing to direct the terrorist activities of the Islamic Group from his prison cell in the United States," Ashcroft said.
Tuesday's indictment names:
* Lynne Stewart, who was Abdel Rahman's attorney during his 1995 trial and conviction for the World Trade Center bombing and has continued to act as one of his attorneys since he has been in prison.
* Mohammed Yousry, the Arabic language interpreter for communications between Stewart and the imprisoned Abdel Rahman.
* Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a resident of Staten Island "and an active Islamic Group leader," Ashcroft said, "whom the indictment describes as a 'surrogate' for Rahman.
* Yassir Al-Sirri, the former head of the London-based Islamic Observation Center, currently in custody in the United Kingdom, "who is charged with facilitating communications among Islamic Group members and providing financing for their activities," Ashcroft said.
The attorney general said the indictment "charges that these defendants worked in concert with Sheik Abdel Rahman, in violation of (Justice Department) Special Administrative Measures restricting Rahman's communications with the outside world, to provide material support and resources to the Islamic Group."
The indictment charges that Rahman used communications with Stewart, translated by Yousry, to pass messages to and receive messages from Sattar, Al-Sirri and other Islamic Group members.
"The terrorist movement at the center of the facts alleged in this indictment, the Islamic Group, has as its credo a message of hate that is now tragically familiar to Americans: to oppose by whatever means necessary the nations, governments, and individuals who do not share its radical interpretation of Islamic law," Ashcroft said in his prepared remarks.
"The Islamic Group is a global terrorist organization that has forged alliances with other terrorist groups, including al Qaida," the attorney general said. "It has an active membership in the United States, concentrated in the New York City metropolitan area."
Ashcroft said Abdel Rahman has been one of the principal leaders of the Islamic Group since the early 1990s, "and has directed its terrorist operations, defined its goals and recruited its membership in the United States. In 1997, following his 1995 imprisonment, Special Administrative Measures were imposed on Sheik Abdel Rahman. Among other restrictions, these measures prohibited Rahman, quote, 'from passing or receiving any written or recorded communications to or from other inmates, visitors, attorney(s), prison staff or anyone else.' "
The restrictions were amended in 1999 to prohibit Rahman from communicating with any member of the news media in person or through his attorneys. Before being allowed access to Rahman, his attorneys, including Stewart, "were required to sign and did sign an affirmation acknowledging that they would abide by these measures and would be accompanied by translators only to communicate with Sheik Rahman regarding legal matters," Ashcroft said.
The indictment "charges that Lynne Stewart and Mohammed Yousry repeatedly and willfully violated these orders in order to maintain Sheik Abdel Rahman's influence over the terrorist activities of the Islamic Group," the attorney general said. "Among other overt acts, the indictment charges that during a May 2000 visit to Sheik Abdel Rahman, Stewart allowed Yousry to read letters from Ahmed Abdel Sattar regarding whether the Islamic Group should continue to comply with a cease-fire in terrorist activities against Egyptian authorities that had been in place following the shooting and stabbing of 58 tourists and four Egyptians visiting an archeological site in Luxor, Egypt in 1997 -- a terrorist attack for which the Islamic Group claimed credit."
The indictment charges that, because these communications violated the Special Administrative Measures placed on Sheik Rahman, "Stewart took affirmative steps to conceal the conversation from prison guards, making extraneous comments in English to mask the Arabic conversation between Rahman and Yousry," Ashcroft said. "Following the meeting, and in further violation of the Special Administrative Measures to which she had agreed, Stewart is charged with announcing to the news media that Rahman had withdrawn his support for the cease-fire."
The indictment also alleges that in a January 2001 phone call, Ahmed Abdel Sattar informed Stewart that prison administrators had pleaded with Rahman's wife to tell Rahman to take his medicine.
"The indictment charges that although they knew Rahman was voluntarily refusing to take insulin for his diabetes, Sattar and Stewart agreed to issue a public statement falsely claiming that Rahman was being denied medical treatment," Ashcroft said. "The indictment charges that Stewart stated that this misrepresentation was 'safe' because no one on the 'outside' would know the truth."
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Justice Department established a new rule "creating the authority to monitor the attorney-client communications of federal inmates whom we suspected of facilitating acts of terrorism," Ashcroft said. "At this time, we attempted to make clear that of the 158,000 inmates in the federal system, this authority would apply only to the 16 inmates who, like Sheik Abdel Rahman, were already under Special Administrative Measures."
Each prisoner would be told in advance his conversations would be monitored, Ashcroft said, adding, "None of the information that is protected by attorney-client privilege would be used for prosecution. Information would only be used to stop impending terrorist acts and save American lives."
The announcement that it would monitor some attorney-client conversations of terrorist suspects caused a firestorm of criticism in the United States.
Ashcroft said Tuesday the public heat was worth it.
"The Department of Justice announced this authority back in October with the knowledge -- which could not be publicly shared for fear of exposing Americans to greater risk -- that inmates such as Sheik Abdel Rahman were attempting to subvert our system of justice for terrorist ends," Ashcroft said, something learned from al Qaida instruction manuals.
Ashcroft said Abdel Rahman had learned importance lessons from the instruction manuals and was attempted to manipulate the system.
"The United States cannot and will not stand by and allow this to happen," the attorney general said. "Accordingly, today I am announcing that the Department of Justice is invoking for the first time the authority to monitor the communications between Sheik Abdel Rahman and his attorneys under the new regulations."
