| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| 'Millennium bomber' review sought |
| 2007-03-04 |
| U.S. federal prosecutors want another chance to seek a stiffer prison term for a man convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport at the turn of the millennium. In a Friday filing, interim U.S. attorney Jeffrey Sullivan of Seattle asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case of Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian whose 22-year prison sentence was thrown out in January. Ressam was arrested near the U.S.-Canadian border in December 1999 after customs agents found explosives in the trunk of his car as he disembarked from a ferry at Port Angeles, Wash. Prosecutors said he was intent on bombing the Los Angeles 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. Federal prosecutors, who were seeking a longer sentence, appealed to the 9th Circuit. But in January, a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appeals court reversed Ressam's conviction on one of the charges and sent the case back to a lower court to issue a new sentence. The panel also asked the lower court to explain the rationale behind the 22-year term. The U.S. attorney's office is now seeking a new hearing on the sentence, in front of 15 of the 9th Circuit judges. If the court agrees to take up the case, the government could renew its arguments for a longer sentence, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Emily Langlie said Friday. "It's always been the government's intention that at any resentencing, we would ask for 35 years," Langlie said. Defence lawyer Thomas Hillier did not immediately return a phone message left at his office Friday evening. After January's ruling, he said the decision could help combat the government's argument that the original sentence was too lenient. In overturning the single conviction in January, two of the three appellate judges said Ressam was improperly convicted of carrying an explosive while committing a felony: lying on a customs form. The government failed to show the "explosives somehow aided or emboldened" him to provide a false name at the border because he had not intended to detonate explosives at the border when he was arrested weeks before Jan. 1, 2000, Judge Pamela Rymer wrote for the majority. After his conviction in 2001, Ressam began co-operating with authorities in hopes of winning a reduced sentence. He faced a maximum of 65 years in prison. But Ressam's co-operation came to a halt by early 2003, resulting in charges being dropped against two other alleged co-conspirators. |
| Posted by:Fred |