‘Fighting Back’ Tour to Defend Civil Liberties

by Stewart Feinman / February 2007 issue of Socialist Action Newspaper

“Fighting Back: No one shall be tortured, falsely imprisoned, or denied basic democratic rights” is the theme of the upcoming Feb. 23-28 San Francisco Bay Area tour of Michael Ratner, Lynne Stewart, Pam Africa, and Jeff Mackler.

The tour is sponsored by and is benefiting the Northern California-based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee. It includes at least 18 meetings, rallies, receptions, and media events.

Winning new support for justice and freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Lynne Stewart and defending basic civil liberties that are under severe attack today are the central objectives of the six-day tour.

Lynne Stewart, 67, a lifelong civil rights and political prisoner attorney, is free on bail pending her appeal of a McCarthy-era type post-9/11 conviction on charges of “conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism.” She was granted permission to travel to California by presiding District Court Judge John Koeltl.

Koeltl shocked more than one legal expert by sentencing Stewart to 28 months in prison in the face of Probation Department and prosecution recommendations that she be sentenced to 30 years. The government is appealing Koeltl’s relatively short sentence, while Stewart is appealing her conviction.

Stewart's crime? She was the lead attorney defending the blind Egyptian cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel Rachman, who was convicted of conspiracy charges to blow up federal monuments. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee head Abdeen Jabarra were Stewart’s co-counsels.

In the course of her defense effort, in a case in which the Wall Street Journal argued that Rachman was innocent, Stewart issued a public press release to Reuters News Agency indicating her client's views on the policies of the Egyptian government—which was then murdering Rachman's imprisoned Islamic co-thinkers.

Federal prosecutors contend that a Bureau of Prison regulation (Special Administrative Measure) prohibited Abdel Rachman to have contact with outside groups.

Ratner: Lawsuit on Guantanamo detainees

Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, will join the tour for its major Feb. 23-25 events in San Francisco, Berkeley, Marin County, and Palo Alto. Ratner won an historic lawsuit against the Bush administration when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that detainees who have been imprisoned and tortured at the U.S. base at Guantanamo, Cuba, must be afforded access to U.S. federal courts—that is, granted the right to habeas corpus.

But this victory was essentially nullified soon afterwards, when a bipartisan Congress passed legislation legitimizing torture—but under a new name. The same legislation effectively denied detainees access to federal courts.

The Bush administration had originally argued before the court that detainees had no rights in U.S. courts because Guantanamo, Cuba, was not a U.S. possession. The more astute Supreme Court rejected this contention, in effect acknowledging U.S. colonial rule over Guantanamo.

Ratner is currently in a battle to use the German court system to file war-crimes/torture charges against Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and some eight other U.S. officials responsible for torture in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and elsewhere.

Pam Africa: Defending Mumia

Pam Africa is the central national leader of the political defense of Mumia-Abu-Jamal, the award-winning African-American journalist on Pennsylvania’s death row for the past 25 years. Jamal’s case is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, with the state of Pennsylvania seeking its third order for Mumia’s execution by lethal injection.

In 1982, in a trial that has been condemned by groups ranging from Amnesty International and the NAACP to the European Parliament and the presidents of France and South Africa, Jamal was convicted of murdering a Philadelphia policeman. Jamal’s legal defense team, headed by Robert R. Bryan, now await oral arguments before the court, in a major battle that could lead to a new trial and Mumia’s freedom.

The possibility of winning a new trial, based on numerous constitutional violations and racist conduct in Mumia’s original 1982 frame-up, has rattled the nation’s top lawmakers.

In December 2006, the U.S. House of Representatives effectively intervened in the judicial proceedings against Mumia by passing a resolution, with only 33 votes in opposition, to condemn the French city of St. Denis for naming a street after Jamal.

The resolution, initiated by two Pennsylvania Congress members, was more intended to pressure the appeals court as it prepares for the final deliberative processes than it was to change the views of St. Denis officials. The latter have visited the U.S. on Mumia’s behalf on several occasions and have rejected the congressional request, pointing to both the racist nature of the legal proceedings against Mumia and to the heinous U.S. death penalty.

Jeff Mackler, tour organizer and director of the West Coast Lynne Stewart Defense Committee and the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, is a major spokesperson for both defense efforts and has written widely on both cases. Barbara Lubin, the executive director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, will also speak at tour meetings. Lubin is a national leader in the defense of Palestinian rights.

In addition to the immediate Bay Area counties, the tour will take the participants to Fresno, Santa Rosa, and Sacramento—as well as to five law schools in the region.

The tour is co-sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild, the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Middle East Children’s Alliance, Vanguard Public Foundation, the Marin Peace and Justice Coalition, and Pacifica radio station KPFA. For further information, call (415) 255-1085.