Prosecutors in the trial of Lynne F. Stewart, a lawyer accused of aiding terrorism, showed jurors a videotape yesterday of Osama bin Laden summoning Muslims to fight to free an Islamic cleric held in an American prison. Mr. bin Laden promises "to do all we can" to liberate the cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was Ms. Stewart's client and who is serving a life sentence in the United States for conspiring to commit terrorist attacks in New York City. In the video, filmed in Afghanistan in the fall of 2000, another Qaeda chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, says that he is "talking business" about securing the sheik's release. "I'm talking jihad," Mr. Zawahiri says.
| "Yeah! Dat's what I'm talkin' about! Jee-had, baby!" |
The videotape is the endpoint of a circuitous trail of connections that prosecutors have been tracing for weeks between Mr. Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian held in solitary confinement in a Minnesota penitentiary, and a cluster of Islamic militants in his home country and Afghanistan. The accusation against Ms. Stewart is that she illegally allowed the sheik to communicate a call to war that inspired Egyptian militants. Ms. Stewart seemed somewhat shaken for the first time since the trial began in June. In a telephone interview yesterday after court, she accused the prosecutors of using a "smear tactic."
| Normally we refer to it as a "tape"... |
She vehemently denied any link to Mr. bin Laden and said she knew nothing about the disputes among the sheik's followers in the Middle East that led the Qaeda leader to hold the meeting shown on the tape. "The prosecutors are saying, 'This is the arch-fiend of terrorism, and here it is the week of 9/11 and we are putting his image into evidence,' " Ms. Stewart said. "It's hard to fight it," she added.
| Especially if it's correct... |
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