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Fifth Column
Four indicted on aiding Abdel Rahman
2002-04-09
  • Four people — including a New York lawyer — were indicted on charges they helped a convicted terrorist imprisoned in the United States communicate with his followers in Egypt. The four are accused of supporting the Egyptian-based terrorist organization known as the Islamic Group by passing messages "to and from the imprisoned Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman." Abdel-Rahman, 63, is serving a life sentence in the United States for conspiring to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and blow up five New York City landmarks in the 1990s.

    Among the four who were indicted is Lynne Stewart, the sheik's lawyer. The indictment charges that the unlawful communications with the sheik happened during prison visits and attorney telephone calls involving Stewart and Mohammed Yousry, an Arabic translator who was also charged.

    Ashcroft identified the others charged as Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a Staten Island man described as a "surrogate" for Abdel-Rahman; and Yassir Al-Sirri, the former head of the London-based Islamic Observation Center. Al-Sirri was charged with "facilitating communications among Islamic Group members and providing financing for their activities." Stewart, Sattar and Yousry were all in federal custody. Al-Sirri was in custody in the United Kingdom. The attorney general announced that the Justice Department had, for the first time, invoked the authority to monitor communications between Abdel-Rahman and his attorneys.

    The indictment alleges the sheik in October 2000 issued an edict titled "Fatwah Mandating the Bloodshed of Israelis Everywhere," which called on "brother scholars everywhere in the Muslim world to do their part and issue an unanimous fatwah (edict) that urges the Muslim nation to fight the Jews and kill them wherever they are."
    "No cigarette, just a blindfold, thank you."
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

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