Why is Julia Preston "Startled"?

She writes,

In a startlingly sweeping verdict, Ms. Stewart was convicted on all five counts of providing material aid to terrorism and of lying to the government when she pledged to obey federal rules that barred her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, from communicating with his followers...

Here's one reason not to be startled:

On the stand, Ms. Stewart sometimes appeared deaf to the vicious anti-American preachings of her client, Mr. Abdel Rahman.

So Julia Preston helpfully notes

The government never showed that any violence resulted from the defendants' actions. The defendants were not accused of aiding terrorism in the United States.

In other words, the letter of the law doesn't matter, Even if:

There was little dispute about the central facts in the case. After Mr. Abdel Rahman was sentenced in 1996 to life in prison, his followers issued a series of threats against the United States demanding his release. Prosecutors imposed rules, known as special administrative measures, that barred the sheik, already held in solitary confinement, from communicating with anyone outside prison but his lawyers and his wife.

Ms. Stewart repeatedly signed documents in which she agreed to uphold the rules.

She brought a letter containing messages from Islamic Group members to a meeting with the sheik in the prison in Rochester, Minn., in May 2000. She received a statement from the sheik and on June 14 called a reporter in Cairo and read him the statement. The sheik said he was withdrawing support for a cease-fire the Islamic Group had observed for three years in Egypt. The group never canceled the cease-fire.

So, um, she violated the agreement she made. Are we to expect that the government would want to encourage that?