Millennium bomber sentence tossed
SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out the sentence of a man who was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport at the turn of the millennium.
Ahmed Ressam was arrested near the U.S.-Canadian border in December 1999 after customs agents found 124 pounds of explosives in the trunk of his car as he disembarked from a ferry in Port Angeles, Wash.
Prosecutors said he was intent on bombing the airport on the eve of the millennium. The arrest raised fears of terrorism attacks and prompted the cancellation of New Year’s celebrations at Seattle’s Space Needle.
Ressam was sentenced to 22 years in prison after being convicted of all nine charges. On Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed his conviction on one of the charges and sent the case back to a lower court to issue a new sentence and explain the rationale behind the 22-year term.
The decision does not necessarily mean Ressam will get a shorter term. Judges are given wide latitude to sentence defendants as they see fit.
After his conviction in 2001, Ressam began cooperating with authorities in hopes of winning a reduced sentence. He faced a maximum of 65 years in prison.
Over the next two years, according to court documents, he provided information on more than 100 potential terrorists and testified against co-conspirator Moktar Haouari and Sept. 11 plotter Mounir el-Motassadeq.
Ressam told authorities he saw Zacarias Moussaoui at a training camp in Afghanistan in 1998. He also told investigators about the type of shoe bomb Richard Reid attempted to detonate on a U.S.-bound airline flight in 2001.
Emily Langlie, spokeswoman for U.S. attorney John McKay in Seattle, said the government was mulling whether to ask the 9th Circuit to rehear the case with 15 judges. They maintain Ressam should get a 35-year term.
Two of the three appellate judges said Ressam was improperly convicted of carrying an explosive while committing a felony: lying on a customs form.