Judges rule ‘millennium bomber’ sentence too lenient

LOS ANGELES — The 22-year prison sentence given to would-be Los Angeles International Airport bomber Ahmed Ressam is so lenient that it constitutes procedural error and failure by the Seattle judge who sentenced him to adequately protect the public, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals ordered the Algerian’s case transferred to a different
judge for resentencing, saying that U.S. District Court Judge John C. Coughenour failed to heed federal sentencing guidelines and a U.S. Supreme Court rebuke.

Ressam was detained in Washington state in December 1999 when he attempted to smuggle explosives into the United States on a ferry from Canada
with plans to detonate them at LAX. He initially cooperated with
interrogators and provided what Coughenour termed vital insight into
the workings of terrorist organizations like al-Qaida.

But Ressam ceased helping federal agents and
retracted his statements implicating other terror suspects after being
subjected to solitary confinement and what he considered interrogation
excesses.

Coughenour twice rejected the federal sentencing
recommendation of 65 years in prison for the terrorism conspiracy
offense, a position the 9th Circuit panel said constituted procedural
error. The judge also failed to consider the potential national
security consequences for the U.S. public if Ressam were to be released
after only a 22-year term, as he would be only 53 years old, the
appeals panel said.

Ressam, now 42, has remained incarcerated in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo., throughout the legal appeals of his sentence.

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