Opinion

She did the crime . . .

Radical lawyer Lynne Stewart is pleading for compassionate release from prison, saying she has only months to live.

Too bad Stewart showed no such compassion when she aided and abetted her convicted client, Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence for plotting a series of assassinations and bombings that includes the first attack on the World Trade Center. Stewart herself was later convicted of providing material support for terrorists by transmitting messages from Rahman to his followers.

Now Stewart is asking for release on the grounds that she is suffering from Stage IV cancer. Her case recalls that of the Lockerbie bomber, who was released from a Scottish prison and returned to Libya because he was said to have only a few weeks left — and ended up living another three years.

“I do not want to die here in prison, a strange and loveless place,” whines Stewart. “I want to be where all is familiar — in a word, home.” So, we suspect, would the six innocent people killed in the 1993 Twin Towers bombing had they lived.

Forgive us, then, if we’re less than sympathetic. She has said of her crime: “I think it was necessary. I would do it again.” And there is no sign she has reconsidered.

Not surprisingly, an online campaign to free her has garnered thousands of supporters, including the usual crowd of predictably clueless lefty celebs, including Ramsey Clark, Pete Seeger, Ed Asner, Dick Gregory and Daniel Ellsberg.

“Allow me to die with dignity,” Stewart asks the court. She might deserve more sympathy had she lived her life with a greater sense of responsibility.