Ahmed Ressam was denied refugee status in Canada after missing a hearing. He continued to live in Montreal under an assumed identity before attempting to carry out a bomb plot. (CBC)The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the so-called millennium bomber, who was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport at the dawn of the year 2000.

In an 8-1 decision, the court upheld Ahmed Ressam's conviction on an explosives charge, one of nine convictions that resulted in the Algerian-born man's 22-year prison sentence.

The court was asked to decide whether Ressam should be convicted of carrying explosives during the commission of another serious crime, in Ressam's case, lying on a U.S. Customs form when he tried to enter the U.S. from British Columbia in late 1999.

A U.S. federal appeals court had thrown out that one explosives conviction early last year, but that decision was appealed by U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the law required proof that the explosives were carried "in relation to" the underlying crime of filing a false form. Prosecutors established no such relationship, the appeals court said.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that decision.

Ressam, a sometime Montreal resident also known as Benni Antoine Noris, was arrested in December 1999 in Port Angeles, Wash., when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia with a trunkload of explosives.

He later reached a deal with American prosecutors to provide information about other terrorism suspects in exchange for a shorter sentence.

Before the border incident, Ressam had been denied refugee status in Canada for missing a hearing, but he had continued to live in Montreal under an assumed identity.

With files from the Associated Press