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f the purpose of terrorizing is to induce decisions that are motivated by fear, then Osama bin Laden has won a great victory with the imprisonment of American civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart. The moment Stewart surrendered to United States marshals, we as Americans bought into bin Laden's draconian vision that civil liberties are bad.

Civil rights attorney Lynne Stuart embraces supporters as she prepares to surrender to US marshals, 11/19/09. (photo: John Marshall Mantel/The New York Times)

If the purpose of terrorizing is to induce decisions that are motivated by fear, then Osama bin Laden has won a great victory with the imprisonment of American civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart.

If this thing that we rail about: "freedom," is so precious, so worth killing and dying for, then surely we must see the irony in the imprisonment of a prominent American civil rights defense lawyer. No less, one who had so long opposed governmental abuse of fundamental constitutional freedoms.

The right to legal representation and the protections provided to the defenders of the accused are cornerstones of our freedoms. Stewart herself put it succinctly. "Coming as it does on the eve of the arrival of the tortured men from offshore prison in Guantánamo," the message, she said, was clear. "If you're going to lawyer for these people, you'd better toe very close to the line that the government has set out." That the government would "be watching you every inch of the way." If that is what Justice in America has been reduced to, then terror has won the day.

This is the legacy of the over-zealous, misguided, Patriot Act. With its vague provisions and wide prosecutorial latitude, it was more a declaration of war on American civil liberties than a viable legal instrument.

The Stewart case from its very origins was a highly flawed legal exercise. It was targeted prosecution, a prosecution with rules of its own. At the heart of the government's case were surveillance tapes, audio and video, all obtained in unprecedented ways. In fact, the law was modified in secret, without public notice, by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft specifically to allow for electronic surveillance of otherwise constitutionally protected attorney-client face-to-face communications. It was the very recordings that resulted from the newly expanded eavesdropping law that formed a large part of the government's case against Lynne Stewart. The newly expanded law might just as well have been called the "get Lynne Stewart exception." Elaine Cassel's authoritative work on the subject, "The Lynne Stewart Guilty Verdict: Stretching the Definition of 'Terrorism' to Its Limits," clearly illustrates a selective prosecution with a predictable political result.

More importantly, as Cassel points out, there was no case for material support of terrorism. Cassel writes, "Stewart never provided any financial support, weaponry - or any other concrete aid - for any act of terrorism. No act of terrorism is alleged to have resulted from her actions." What Stewart did do was - what any defense attorney worth their salt would do - "zealously represent their client."

The backdrop for the prosecution of Lynne Stewart is the broader context of prosecution as it has been applied to "war-on-terror" related legal issues on the whole. There are two starkly different interpretations of what the government views as prosecutable: one for those who act in accordance with government initiatives, and a far less tolerant standard for those who would dissent.

70-year-old civil rights attorney and cancer survivor Lynne Stewart has been tried, convicted, and placed in a prison cell. Who will prosecute those who authorized torture on behalf of the United States? If most of those imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay are guilty of nothing, as most human rights legal experts argue, who will stand for them? What has become of justice for those tortured at Abu Ghraib? The list of recent crimes carried out with US government sanction is long. It includes, but is not limited to, spying on Americans by the US government, rendition, torture, assassination, and of course, the "pre-emptive" invasion of Iraq.

Justice William O. Douglas, in his 1969 book "Points of Rebellion," was blunt as he warned of the loss of personal freedoms: "Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like."

Lynne Stewart was not just Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's advocate; she was a lifelong, tireless, advocate for American civil liberties. She was our advocate, we, who value freedom. Osama bin Laden notwithstanding.

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