The Government began it's closing this week but will finish next week, followed by the defense closings. International Action Center reports:

We have just learned that the schedule for the summations in the Trial of Lynne Stewart have changed. The government is going to be continuing their summation on Monday, January 3rd, [2005]. Only comment from the defense is that they must have written it before the evidence was entered. The defense summations will begin immediately after the government summations end and will be David Stern for Mohammed Yousry, followed by the attorney for Ahmed Sattar. Michael Tigar on behalf of Lynne Stewart will be last and will be on either Tuesday, January 4th or Wednesday, January 5th. It is impossible for us to predict exactly what day Tigar's summation will be. Feel free to call 212-625-9696. We will send out another announcement when we know for sure. Come to court for Lynne Stewart. 40 Foley Square, Rm. 110, NYC.

Closing arguments are underway in the trial of New York defense lawyer Lynne Stewart, charged with providing material support to terrorists by passing along messages from her imprisoned client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. Here is what the prosecutor said. We will wait to comment until we read what Michael Tigar had to say for Ms. Stewart before commenting.

Rejecting requests from the Government, Judge Lonnie Brinkema, presiding over the trial of accused al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, has refused to set a trial date.

Brinkema said in a two-page order that intense pretrial work in her court, including the handling of classified information, cannot resume until Moussaoui has exhausted pretrial appeals.

Encouraging news...New York defense lawyer Lynne Stewart, on trial for providing material support to terrorists by passing along messages from her imprisoned client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, finished nine days on the witness stand, and earns high marks.

Throughout her time on the witness stand, Stewart largely kept her composure, becoming emotional on only one occasion. Her final day of cross-examination was similar to previous days. Stewart appeared largely unruffled and answered the prosecutor's questions directly, although she made a point of interjecting comments to score points along the way.

Overall, Stewart was a strong witness who came across as fairly direct and open, despite the prosecution's continued implication that she was being disingenuous and stretching her interpretation of the law to cover damaging facts.

Stewart's lawyer, Michael Tigar, on redirect, diffused much of the prosecution's argument:

Here's what I would not want my lawyer-client testifying to in a trial accusing her of providing material support to terrorists. Either 7 days of questioning were too much for Lynne Stewart or, and I hope this is the case, the media is quoting her out of context.

Hopefully, her lawyer Michael Tigar will clear this up on redirect.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be charged in federal court with offenses relating to the 9/11 attack, is asking for a delay in setting his trial date so he can appeal the most recent adverse rulings against him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Scotus blog reports these are the constitutional issues he will raise:

• Has Moussaoui’s Sixth Amendment right to obtain witnesses to testify in his favor been denied? That is a reference to the three high-level Al Qaeda operatives that the U.S. has captured and is holding overseas in undisclosed locations. The Fourth Circuit has ruled that they could give favorable testimony that might help Moussaoui prove that he was not directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. The Fourth Circuit, however, has strictly limited his lawyers’ access to those three. This issue will turn on the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year in Crawford v. Washington.

• Is it appropriate, under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, for the government to seek the death penalty when the government will not produce “all favorable evidence before trial,” and the jury that would sentence Moussoui if convicted “is precluded from considering all of the circumstances of the offense”? This is a reference to the unusual procedure mandated by the Fourth Circuit for editing, for use at trial, statements that the Al Qaeda operatives have made to government interrogators about 9/11.

Lawyer Lynne Stewart took the stand yesterday in her terrorism-related trial.

Her testimony, on the first day of the defense presentation of its case, brought new electricity to a long trial that is examining the limits of what lawyers can do to represent terrorists, in one of the most ambitious terror cases brought by the Justice Department of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

On the stand, Ms. Stewart, 65, looked much like the public school librarian she once was, wearing her gray hair in a proper bowl cut and dressed in a conservative black and brown dress and orthopedic lace-up shoes. But, in a presentation full of contrasts, she described an approach to the law that had led her to the no-holds-barred defense of unpopular, unsavory and dangerously violent clients.

Stewart represents the militant and blind Islamic cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted of conspiracy in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. She is charged with helping him communicate with the Egyptian-based Islamic Group from prison. The evidence against her is her jailhouse and telephone conversations with her client, secretly recorded by the Government. You can read the details of her case here.

She is being represented by legendary lawyer and American University Law School dean Michael Tigar, who defended Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma City Bombing trial.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and his prosecutors are once again trying to trample on the rights of the defendants. In their latest move, in the Albany terrorism case, they have asked the judge to have a monitor present during attorney client conferences where documents are being reviewed:

Federal prosecutors handling an alleged terrorism money laundering case in Albany are demanding extraordinary security protections, including direct oversight by a Justice Department employee, whenever defense counsel and their clients view sensitive materials.

The government wants a Justice Department security specialist in a secured room where attorneys and the defendants will examine and discuss confidential, secret, top secret or "sensitive compartmentalized information," according to documents filed late last week in U.S. v. Aref and Hossain, 04-CR-402.

We asked Terry Kindlon, a defense lawyer on the case, for his reaction to the unprecedented request, and here's what he said:

One of the defendants in the recently overturned Detroit terror case was released from jail today--allowed to go to a halfway house while he awaits trial on a document fraud offense and possible deportation. He had quite an earful for the Judge:

"I am innocent," said the immigrant, Karim Koubriti, a 26-year-old Moroccan, in an interview shortly after the judge, Gerald A. Rosen, said he would not have to return to prison. "I always say I was innocent. Three years ago I said I was innocent and nobody believed me except these guys," he said, referring to his lawyers.

Mr. Koubriti said he had been kept in an isolation cell 23 hours a day for much of his incarceration with a television but no reading material. "All my time in Wayne County they didn't even let me out to smell air," he said, referring to the jail at Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit. He also said he was often verbally abused in prison for being a terrorism suspect, especially in 2001.

"It was horrible, especially from some of the deputies - not all, to be honest with you," he said. "I heard all sorts of stuff - devil worshiper, monster, go pray to your terrorist god."

And in what must be the understatement of his life, when asked about his release, he said:

This is unusual, to say the least. Is it also improper? At least one expert thinks so.

The judge who presided over the biggest terrorism trial since Sept. 11 left his Detroit courtroom, traveled to CIA headquarters and helped interview a witness whose testimony later became key to the judge's reversal of convictions in the case.

Government officials familiar with the interview told The Associated Press the judge and Justice officials worked together outside the presence of defense lawyers to conduct the interview because of concerns about protecting secret information under the Classified Information Procedures Act. But legal experts said U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen's actions were highly unusual and could provide grounds for lawyers to challenge his impartiality because he assumed the role of investigator in a case he continued to preside over.

The New York Times takes an exhaustive look at the Justice Department's flawed prosecution in the Detroit terror case. This is the case that Ashcroft personally vouched for in a press conference...earning him a rebuke from the Judge for violating a gag order.

Privately, senior Justice Department officials had doubts about the strength of the case even as they were moving to indict four Middle Eastern immigrants on terrorism charges. The evidence was "somewhat weak," an internal Justice Department memorandum obtained by The New York Times acknowledged. It relied on a single informant with "some baggage," and there was no clear link to terrorist groups. But charging the men with terrorism, the memorandum said, might pressure them to give up information.

"We can charge this case with the hope that the case might get better," Barry Sabin, the department's counterterrorism chief, wrote in the memorandum, "and the certainty that it will not get much worse."

Four more years of Bush is four more years of Ashcroft.

John Walker Lindh, referred to as "The American Taliban" has filed a request with the Pardon Office asking President Bush to commute and reduce his 20 year sentence. Lindh's lawyer argues that Lindh should be treated similarly to Yaser Hamdi who was released and deported last week, after spending three years in custody.

Lindh, a 23-year-old Northern California native, pleaded guilty in civilian court to supplying services to the now-defunct Taliban government and carrying explosives for them. He and Hamdi were both captured in late 2001. Brosnahan said he negotiated the 20-year sentence during a time when a "highest state of fear" was affecting U.S. juries and he thought it was the best deal he could get at the time. He could have gotten life in prison if convicted.

Both are American-born. Both were captured in Afghanistan and brought to the U.S. Hamdi was held in detention and never charged. Lindh was charged in civilian court.

What justifies their different treatment?