Great timing for Lynne Stewart’s sentencing appeal.
The radical attorney’s legal team argued in court Wednesday that the 10-year sentence she received for smuggling messages to supporters of her imprisoned former client, blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, violated her right to free speech.
That’s nonsense on stilts, of course; she’s right where she belongs.
But the appeal shines a bright light on a not-totally-unrelated current concern — the barrage of criticism coming from New Jersey public officials over NYPD surveillance of Muslim individuals and organizations in the state in 2007.
Rahman was convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up several New York landmarks — after having preached in Jersey City for several years.
His acolytes in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (which killed six), as well as several of the 9/11 hijackers, also spent considerable time in New Jersey.
Clearly, when it comes to terrorism and terrorists, Jersey’s worth keeping a close eye on.
Yet Garden State pols of all stripes — including Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Gov. Chris Christie — are in high dudgeon over the NYPD’s activities in Booker’s city.
Christie said Wednesday, “I don’t know all the details yet, but my concern is . . . why can’t you be . . . communicating with the people here in New Jersey, with law enforcement here in New Jersey?”
He doubled down on Thursday, claiming that the poor communication “seems to be an abandonment of the core lesson of 9/11.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christie needs to play closer attention to his own side of the river.
Fact is, the NYPD was communicating with its next-door neighbor: In 2005, then-Gov. Richard Codey signed two executive orders authorizing New York cops to operate within New Jersey.
Indeed, with those orders, the NYPD wasn’t even obligated to inform Newark authorities — but did so anyway. And a Newark police-liaison officer even was assigned to the NYPD surveillance squad.
Sounds like both Booker and Christie need to be opening internal lines of communication, rather than hectoring New York. After all, if Jersey officials can’t keep each other informed on counterterrorism, that’s not Ray Kelly’s fault.
It’ll be interesting to see how all this whining about NYPD efforts to keep the metropolitan area safe plays politically.
But handcuffing New York’s Finest would certainly be atrocious public policy.