Political prisoners in the US: Pete Seeger: “Lynn Stewart Should be outa jail!” [View all]

[HiPointDem]

PETITION TO FREE LYNNE STEWART: SAVE HER LIFE – RELEASE HER NOW!

CLICK TO SIGN PETITION:
http://www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-save-her-life-release-her-now-2

Lynne Stewart has devoted her life to the oppressed – a constant advocate for the countless many deprived in the United States of their freedom and their rights.

Unjustly charged and convicted for the “crime” of providing her client with a fearless defense, the prosecution of Lynne Stewart is an assault upon the basic freedoms of us all.

After years of post-conviction freedom, her bail was revoked arbitrarily and her imprisonment ordered, precluding surgery she had scheduled in a major New York hospital.

Since her imprisonment in the Federal Prison in Carswell, Texas her urgent need for surgery was delayed 18 months – so long, that the operating physician pronounced the condition as “the worst he had seen.”

Now, breast cancer, which had been in remission prior to her imprisonment, has reached Stage Four. It has appeared in her lymph nodes, on her shoulder, in her bones and her lungs.

Her daughter, a physician, has sounded the alarm: “Under the best of circumstances, Lynne would be in a battle of the most serious consequences with dangerous odds. With cancer and cancer treatment, the complications can be as debilitating and as dangerous as the cancer itself.”

In her current setting, where trips to physicians involve attempting to walk with 10 pounds of shackles on her wrists and ankles, with connecting chains, Lynne Stewart has lacked ready access to physicians and specialists under conditions compatible with medical success.

It can take weeks to see a medical provider in prison conditions. It can take weeks to report physical changes and learn the results of treatment; and when held in the hospital, Lynne has been shackled wrist and ankle to the bed.

This medieval “shackling” has little to do with any appropriate prison control. She is obviously not an escape risk.

We demand abolition of this practice for all prisoners, let alone those facing surgery and the urgent necessity of care and recovery.

It amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of human rights.

We cry out against the bureaucratic murder of Lynne Stewart.

If Lynne’s original sentence of 28 months had not been unreasonably, punitively increased to 10 years, she would be home now — where her medical care would be by her choice and where those who love her best would care for her. Her isolation from this loving care would end.

Free Lynne Stewart Now!

http://lynnestewart.org/page/2/


Lynne Irene Stewart (born October 8, 1939) is a former attorney who represented controversial, poor, and often unpopular defendants who was convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005,[1] and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Her felony conviction led to her being automatically disbarred.

She was convicted of helping pass messages from her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric convicted of planning terror attacks, to his followers in al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an organization designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States Secretary of State.

She was re-sentenced on July 15, 2010, to 10 years in prison in light of her alleged perjury at her trial.[2] She is currently serving her sentence at FMC Carswell in Ft Worth, Texas.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Stewart