Would-Be Millennium Bomber Ressam Gets 22-Year Sentence

The Algerian who plotted to blow up Los Angeles International Airport at the height of millennium celebrations five years ago was sentenced Wednesday to 22 years in prison.

Ahmed Ressam, 38, flashed a brief grin as he was sentenced to the midrange of what attorneys had requested. Defense lawyers had asked for 12 1/2 years; prosecutors wanted 35 years. He will get credit for the five years he has spent in custody.

Ressam, who had for a period cooperated with authorities in tracking down other terrorists, said nothing in court, but federal Public Defender Thomas W. Hillier II said his client had given U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour a note before the sentencing. The note, according to Hillier, said: “I am sorry for what I did. I know it was wrong, and I no longer believe in acts of violence.”

Both sides had mixed reactions to the sentence.

“We’re disappointed that the court didn’t accept our recommendation of 35 years,” U.S. Atty. John McKay said. “But it is a lengthy sentence, a significant sentence, against a man who came here to kill many people. What he wanted to do was kill innocent children, women and men, and kill as many as he could.”

“The court sent an important message to would-be terrorists,” McKay said.

Hillier, the public defender, called it “a long sentence,” but said it was significant that the court had decided on a sentence of fewer than 25 years. “It reflects that this man cooperated under life-threatening circumstances.”

With time already served and good behavior, Ressam could be out in 14 years.

Ressam was arrested in Port Angeles, Wash., in December 1999 after a U.S. Customs officer became suspicious as Ressam drove a rented Chevrolet off a ferry from British Columbia, Canada. Officers found enough explosive material in the trunk of his vehicle to take down a small building and potentially kill hundreds of people.

Ressam had been living in Montreal and was traveling on a forged Canadian passport.

Court documents say Ressam first refused to cooperate with the FBI, but that after his April 2001 conviction on terrorist conspiracy and explosives charges, he suffered an emotional breakdown and had a change of heart.

He confessed to being an Al Qaeda operative and said that his target was not Seattle’s Space Needle, as was widely speculated at the time of his arrest. His intended target was an LAX terminal teeming with holiday travelers. He and his associates saw the airport as an American symbol of commerce.

Ressam began disclosing information on his former associates in an Algerian terrorist group and the broader umbrella organization Al Qaeda.

Court documents show that Ressam provided information on more than 100 suspected terrorists, helped shut down clandestine Al Qaeda cells and exposed organizational secrets of the global terrorist network.

His cooperation helped convict Mokhtar Haouari, 33, on charges that he provided logistical support in the plot to bomb LAX. Haouari, who is also Algerian, was sentenced in 2002 in New York to 24 years in prison.

Prosecutors said that when Ressam learned that his sentence would not be reduced as much as he hoped, he stopped cooperating.

Authorities said he stopped providing information sometime in early 2003.

One consequence of Ressam’s renewed silence is that two of his suspected co-conspirators -- Abu Doha, who is being held in Great Britain, and Samir Ait Mohamed, held in Canada -- will probably escape prosecution in the United States, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle.

“We’re left without his testimony in two significant cases,” McKay said. When asked whether it was possible Ressam could have another change of heart, McKay said: “I’m doubtful he will cooperate in the future.”

Ressam’s defense team said their client stopped cooperating because he was being mistreated and bullied while in custody, and because he had “lost all hope” that he would be treated fairly by the U.S. court system.

Ressam was originally scheduled to be sentenced in April, but Judge Coughenour postponed the date to give Ressam a chance to resume cooperating with the FBI in exchange for a shorter sentence.

Coughenour, before the sentencing on Wednesday, gave a lengthy and emotional statement, saying in part: “This sentencing is one that I have struggled with a great deal, more than any other sentencing that I’ve had in the 24 years I’ve been on the bench.”

The judge ended his statement by indirectly criticizing alleged constitutional abuses against suspected terrorists.

“Despite the fact that Mr. Ressam is not an American citizen and despite the fact that he entered this country intent upon killing American citizens,” Coughenour said, “he received an effective, vigorous defense. Most importantly, all of this occurred in the sunlight of a public trial. There were no secret proceedings, no indefinite detentions, no denial of counsel.”