NEW YORK — The government has told a federal judge in New York that he doesn’t have authority to release an ailing disbarred civil rights lawyer serving a 10-year prison sentence after a terrorism-related conviction.

Prosecutors said in court papers that a request by lawyers for Lynne Stewart that a judge order her release so she can better fight terminal cancer should be rejected. They wrote that a judge doesn’t have the authority to reconsider or modify a term of imprisonment previously imposed unless the federal Bureau of Prisons requests it.

Defense lawyers made the request last week after the director of the Bureau of Prisons rejected a compassion release request from Stewart in June.

Stewart is being held at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Texas. She’s been in prison since 2009.