SEATTLE — Ahmed Ressam, the "millennium bomber" convicted of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, was resentenced to 22 years in prison Wednesday after a federal judge found that solitary confinement and repeated interrogations had helped cause him to stop cooperating in other terrorism prosecutions.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour rejected the government's warning that Ressam, who in 1999 was stopped coming off a ferry from Canada with a carload of explosives, had reverted to Al Qaeda sympathies and would represent a danger if he were ever released.
Noting that the case comes "as our nation prepares for a new chapter," Coughenour said Ressam had provided "an unprecedented view of the inner workings [of Al Qaeda] that almost without question prevented . . . future attacks."
The substantial help that the Algerian provided to U.S. officials before his change of heart -- coupled with the relatively shorter sentences handed out in other terrorism cases -- merited no harsher a penalty than the 22-year sentence first imposed in 2005, the judge said.
That sentence effectively was vacated by a federal appeals court ruling on another issue in the case. So prosecutors were able to return to court Wednesday to argue that Coughenour's original sentence was too lenient, given Ressam's failure to live up to his cooperation agreement.
Government lawyers started out the day seeking a 45-year sentence. But as Ressam accused investigators of pressuring him through mental duress into providing unreliable information against Al Qaeda suspects, prosecutors upped the ante to demand life in prison.
Ressam, who was representing himself, did not object.
"Sentence me to life in prison, or anything you wish," he told the judge. "I will have no objection to your sentence."
The Ressam case represents a stunning reversal for federal prosecutors who once had relied on the 41-year-old militant for help in a variety of high-level terrorism cases -- some of which were halted in their tracks when he stopped talking in 2003.
Ressam has recanted his testimony in at least three cases, one involving his alleged accomplice in the Los Angeles bombing plot, Mokhtar Haouari. The Montreal shopkeeper was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2001 for conspiring to provide material support by giving Ressam money and a fake Canadian driver's license.
