Mary Jo White didn't try the case, a lawyer in her office was assigned as lead prosecutor. As for the merits and fairness of the prosecution, that all comes down to how you feel about a lawyer who violates an administrative gag order and willfully violated the law to assist her client, a convicted terrorist leader, in communicating with followers around the world. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/cassel/20050214.html
The government eavesdropped on Stewart's communications with Rahman - and these communications, along with her subsequent communications with the media, are the sole basis for her conviction. The government alleges that Stewart never intended to abide by the SAMs, and that - as, it say, it discovered by eavesdropping - she violated them in several ways. Along with Mohammed Yousry, an interpreter, and Ahmed Abdel Sattar who sometimes acted in the role of a law clerk, the government alleges, Stewart tried to thwart the government's surveillance. At trial, the government introduced surveillance tapes intending to demonstrate that Stewart served as a willing conduit for the Sheik, using her position as a lawyer as a smokescreen for illegal communications and conspiracies by people whose agenda she shared.
In particular, the government charges, Stewart violated the prohibition on outside contacts in two ways. First, it alleged in 2000, she released to Reuters News Service a statement from the Sheik to his followers saying that he was "withdrawing his support for a ceasefire that currently exists" with respect to violence that his followers in Egypt were engaged in (the cease-fire was declared after 58 tourists were slain in Luxor, Egypt, in a bid to win the sheik's release). The government charged that the press release was a veiled message for the shiek's followers to engage in violence. Reuters ran a story about the statement in Arab newspapers.
Second, the government says Stewart was present when Yousry and Sattar allegedly helped the Sheik compose letters that served as communications to his followers. (Notably, though, while Yousry and Sattar speak Arabic, it is undisputed that Stewart neither speaks nor understands Arabic.) In closing arguments, Prosecutor Andrew Dember argued that Stewart and the co-defendants effectuated a virtual "jail-break," in which Rahman did not actually get sprung from prison, but did get his messages of violence out to the world. Yet no actual act of violence, terroristic or otherwise, has ever been linked to either the letters to the Sheik's followers, or the statement by the Sheik given to Reuters. Yousry was convicted on the same charges as Stewart; Sattar was convicted of conspiracy to murder civilians.
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