The man known as the "millennium bomber" for his foiled plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999 has been sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Ahmed Ressam – who was caught trying to smuggle a trunkload of explosives into Washington state from Victoria in December 1999 – was sentenced by a Seattle federal judge on Wednesday on charges of conspiracy to commit an international terrorist act, explosives smuggling and other criminal counts.

A longer prison term had been expected because Ressam, 38, stopped co-operating with U.S. investigators who hoped to prosecute two suspected accomplices.

Ahmed Ressam. (CP Photo / Le Journal de Montreal)
Ahmed Ressam. (CP Photo / Le Journal de Montreal)

Prosecutors said Ressam's silence would likely force them to drop charges against the others, including a man who has been held in a Vancouver jail since July 2001.

Judge considered suspect's co-operation

U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour said he tried to balance the American desire to punish people who plot such attacks with earlier co-operation by Ressam, an Algerian who lived in Montreal.

"This period of confinement recognizes the seriousness of the crimes and the co-operation of Mr. Ressam," Coughenour said.

The judge said he also hoped to show that the U.S. justice system handled such cases in a fair and transparent manner. He made an apparent contrast to the treatment of many people detained after the Sept. 11 attacks, such as those being held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely or deny the defendant the right to counsel," Coughenour said in court.

"Our courts have not abandoned the commitment to the ideals that set this nation apart."

"We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely or deny the defendant the right to counsel."–Judge John Coughenour

U.S. border officials caught Ressam after he arrived in Port Angeles, Wash., on a ferry from Victoria, B.C. about two weeks before the new year in 1999.

Ressam told authorities that he had planned to blow up the Los Angeles airport. He then made a deal with prosecutors to help convict two co-conspirators.

The deal would have put him behind bars for 27 years, but Ressam later refused to co-operate and prosecutors sought a 35-year term.

Prosecutors say his change of mind jeopardized the cases against Abu Doha, a radical Muslim imam alleged to be the plot's mastermind who is awaiting extradition from Britain, and Samir Ait Mohamed, who is going through the same process in Canada.

Defence lawyers sought a 12½-year sentence, maintaining that Ressam offered important intelligence on terrorist training camps to investigators from several countries before he clammed up in early 2003.

"He is now at a point where he feels he can do no more," Ressam's lawyers wrote in a pre-sentencing document this week."

"Mr. Ressam knows what he did was wrong and hopes the court accepts his statement that he is truly sorry," it added.

Some of Ressam's information was used in an intelligence report given to U.S. President George W. Bush before Sept. 11, 2001, that said Osama bin Laden was determined to strike the U.S.

Coughenour was to have sentenced Ressam in April, but gave him an extra three months to change his mind about further co-operation.

At one time, prosecutors offered a 25-year sentence if Ressam would plead guilty, but he did not, and government witnesses downplayed the value of evidence he supplied to investigators.

The defence countered that foreign investigators had told the U.S. Justice Department that Ressam's information had been "substantial" and "useful."