 SEATTLE (AP) - Rejecting prosecutors' calls for a life term, a federal judge on Wednesday reimposed a 22-year prison sentence for an al-Qaida-trained terrorist convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport at the turn of the millennium.
Ahmed Ressam, whose plot was thwarted when border agents in Washington state caught him with a car packed with explosives, would be released in 10 years — at age 51 — with credit for time served and good behavior.
"To say I'm profoundly disappointed would be an understatement," U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan said afterward, promising to ask the Justice Department to appeal. "He deserves to be locked up until he dies."
U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour first sentenced Ressam to 22 years in 2005, saying he deserved leniency for cooperating with investigators following his 2001 conviction on terrorism, explosives and other charges. A federal appeals court vacated the sentence early last year and asked the judge to better explain himself and to follow new federal sentencing procedures.
This time, Coughenour determined the guideline range for Ressam's offenses to be 65 years to life, and said that even though Ressam "unwisely" stopped cooperating by 2003 — forcing the Justice Department to drop charges against two alleged coconspirators — the information he provided earlier likely saved innocent lives.
"Its importance has not changed in my analysis today," Coughenour said.  Ressam, a thin man with a short beard and closely cropped hair, made no apologies or explanations for his actions as he addressed the court through an interpreter.
He recanted all his previous cooperation — "I did not know what I was saying," he claimed — and insisted that lawyers and prosecutors had badgered him into making false allegations against other alleged terrorists.
"I have escaped my words, finally," Ressam said. "Sentence me to life in prison or anything you wish. I will have no objection to your sentence. Thank you."
Prosecutors last week filed a memo with the court seeking a 45-year sentence, but Sullivan and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Bartlett became so indignant listening to Ressam speak in court that they changed their recommendation to life.  The judge said that failing to credit Ressam's prior cooperation could discourage other terrorists from speaking to investigators. Coughenour also noted that 22 years was longer than the 20 years given to John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban," and the 17 years given to Jose Padilla, convicted of supporting terrorism after investigators said he planned to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" and blow up an apartment building.
Bartlett brought up another terrorist, comparing Ressam's capture to what it would have been like to arrest Timothy McVeigh as he drove a truck laden with explosives into Oklahoma City.
"I would ask the court to think about how many people would have been killed" at LAX, Bartlett implored. McVeigh's bomb killed 168 people in 1995.
U.S. border guards in Port Angeles, on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, arrested Ressam as he drove a rented car packed with explosives off a ferry from British Columbia in December 1999. The ensuing scare prompted Seattle officials to cancel some millennium celebrations at the Space Needle, though investigators determined Ressam's target was a terminal at the Los Angeles airport, busy with holiday travel.
A jury convicted Ressam in 2001 of nine offenses, including an act of international terrorism, smuggling explosives and presenting a false passport. Hoping to avoid a life sentence, he began cooperating with international terrorism investigators, telling them about training camps he had attended in Afghanistan and al-Qaida's use of safe-houses, among other things.
The government acknowledges that some of the information Ressam provided was useful. In one case, it helped prevent the mishandling and potential detonation of the shoe bomb that Richard Reid attempted to light aboard an American Airlines flight in December 2001.  Ressam also provided testimony against two coconspirators, helping to convict them. But Bartlett said Wednesday that one of those coconspirators, Mokhtar Haouari, is likely to seek a new trial given that Ressam recanted his statements.
Ressam quit talking with investigators by early 2003. His lawyers insisted that long periods in solitary confinement had taken their toll on his mental state; prosecutors argued that Ressam's reticence came because they would not agree to recommend a sentence of less than 27 years.
In 2005, Coughenour sentenced Ressam to 22 years, essentially splitting the difference between what prosecutors and defense attorneys requested. Coughenour used the occasion to chastise the Bush administration's handling of "enemy combatants" in the war on terror, saying Ressam's prosecution proved that U.S. courts can handle such cases.
Both sides appealed, with the government arguing the sentence was too light and Ressam's lawyers challenging his conviction on one charge. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction in May, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to Coughenour for resentencing.
Without Ressam's testimony, the Justice Department was forced to drop charges filed in New York against two other alleged coconspirators, including Abu Doha, described as a top al-Qaida recruiter with direct ties to Osama bin Laden. Abu Doha was released from custody in London after the U.S. dropped the charges; he is currently fighting deportation to Algeria.
In the past two years, prosecutors said, Ressam has recanted statements he made implicating Hassan Zemiri, a friend from Canada who was captured by the U.S. in Afghanistan in 2001 and is being held at Guantanamo Bay; and Adil Charkaoui, also known as Zubeir al-Meghrebi, a Moroccan-born man who has been accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent and is in a court battle to remain in Canada. |