'Millennium bomber' gets longer jail of 37 years
Source: Agencies |
October 26, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
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"MILLENNIUM bomber" Ahmed Ressam, whose original 22-year prison term was deemed too lenient by a US appeals court, has been re-sentenced to 37 years behind bars for a foiled New Year's Eve 1999 plot to set off explosives at Los Angeles International Airport.
Federal prosecutors who appealed the original punishment asked the Seattle-based US district judge presiding over the case to impose a new sentence that would require Ressam, an Algerian national, to spend the rest of his life in prison.
They argued Ressam deserved a much harsher penalty because he had reneged on an agreement to assist in the prosecution of other suspected militants and later recanted all his testimony and other statements to authorities.
By doing so Ressam, 45 , demonstrated he would remain a threat to society once released from prison, prosecutors said.
But US District Judge John Coughenour ruled that while a stiffer sentence was called for, a life term was not warranted under the circumstances.
"This case provokes our greatest fears ... but fear is a foul ingredient for sentencing calculations," the judge said.
Ressam was arrested in December 1999 as he attempted to cross into the United States from British Columbia and aroused the suspicion of a US customs inspector at a ferry landing in Port Angeles, Washington.
After he tried to run away, the trunk of his rental car was found packed with explosives capable of producing a blast 40 times greater than that of a typical car bomb. A jury convicted him in April 2001 of nine felony counts for his role in a plot to set off the explosives at Los Angeles International Airport on December 31, 1999.
Federal prosecutors who appealed the original punishment asked the Seattle-based US district judge presiding over the case to impose a new sentence that would require Ressam, an Algerian national, to spend the rest of his life in prison.
They argued Ressam deserved a much harsher penalty because he had reneged on an agreement to assist in the prosecution of other suspected militants and later recanted all his testimony and other statements to authorities.
By doing so Ressam, 45 , demonstrated he would remain a threat to society once released from prison, prosecutors said.
But US District Judge John Coughenour ruled that while a stiffer sentence was called for, a life term was not warranted under the circumstances.
"This case provokes our greatest fears ... but fear is a foul ingredient for sentencing calculations," the judge said.
Ressam was arrested in December 1999 as he attempted to cross into the United States from British Columbia and aroused the suspicion of a US customs inspector at a ferry landing in Port Angeles, Washington.
After he tried to run away, the trunk of his rental car was found packed with explosives capable of producing a blast 40 times greater than that of a typical car bomb. A jury convicted him in April 2001 of nine felony counts for his role in a plot to set off the explosives at Los Angeles International Airport on December 31, 1999.
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