A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Tuesday overturned the 22-year sentence imposed on a man convicted of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport at the start of the millennium.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case of Ahmed Ressam, known as the "millennium bomber," back to U.S. District Court in Seattle.
The appeals court said the case needed to be recalculated because it had vacated one of the numerous counts on which Ressam had been convicted -- the charge of carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony, which carried a 10-year minimum sentence under federal guidelines.
U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Pamela Ann Rymer, writing for the majority, referred to the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit are considering cases that are expected to have a significant impact on federal sentencing law.
Consequently, District Judge John C. Coughenour will have to wait for those decisions, said Thomas W. Hillier II, the federal public defender in Seattle, who is representing Ressam.
Ohio State University law professor Douglas A. Berman said it made sense for the three-judge panel to send the case back to Coughenour and tell him to wait to resentence Ressam until the Supreme Court brings some clarity to federal sentencing law.
University of Richmond law professor Carl W. Tobias agreed, but said sentencing law "is in such a state of flux" that Ressam's resentencing could come "far in the future."
Ressam left his native Algeria for France in 1992 and two years later fled to Canada after being arrested on an immigration violation. While in Montreal in 1998, Ressam met an Al Qaeda operative who recruited him for a training camp in Afghanistan. According to Tuesday's ruling, Ressam spent six months at a training camp, learning how to fire a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and make explosive charges, and "how to destroy infrastructure targets, such as power plants, military installations, railroads and airports," Rymer wrote.
Later, Ressam went to a second camp near Jalalabad, where he and others "hatched the plot to target a U.S. airport to coincide with the millennium," the judge added.
In December 1999, Ressam left British Columbia in a rented Chrysler loaded with explosives, electronic timing devices, detonators, fertilizer and aluminum sulfate. After he crossed by ferry to Port Angeles, Wash., an alert customs inspector, Diana Dean, noticed that he was agitated and asked other agents to search his car.
