Ahmed Ressam's Sentence in Plot to Bomb LAX Thrown Out as Too Lenient

(Feb. 3) – A federal appeals court has thrown out a 22-year prison sentence given to an Algerian man convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the millennium, calling it too lenient, and the court removed the sentencing judge from the case.

The case, involving Ahmed Ressam, will be transferred to another judge, as the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said it doubted the impartiality of U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who imposed the sentence.

A divided three-judge panel said on Tuesday that the Seattle-based Coughenour had failed to protect public safety and had ignored a directive from the Supreme Court, which had ordered him to impose a new sentence under federal guidelines, The Associated Press reported.

Ahmed Ressam was captured on December 14, 1999

Seattle Times/MCT

Algerian Ahmed Ressam was captured in Washington state in December 1999. He was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.

Ressam was detained in Washington state in December 1999 when he tried to smuggle explosives into the U.S. on a ferry from Canada that he intended to use at the Los Angeles airport. After his arrest, Ressam agreed to cooperate with terrorism investigators, but he later reneged on that promise, the appeals panel said.

U.S. prosecutors said Ressam, 42, cooperated for two years but that his change of heart compromised at least two terrorist cases in the U.S., resulting in charges having to be dropped, the AP said.

Investigators said Ressam attended three training camps for Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan between March 1998 and February 1999, learning to handle weapons and build bombs.

Coughenour, who presided over the case for a decade, twice rejected the requests of a federal sentencing commission, which called for a sentence of 65 years.

The semi-retired Seattle judge declined to comment today, the AP reported. In December 2008, the judge said deciding on a sentence for Ressam was a decision he had struggled over more than any other "in my 27 years on the bench."

In its findings today, the appeals panel said Coughenour had failed to consider the potential security consequences, because if Ressam had been released after 22 years, he would still have been only 53 years old, the Los Angeles Times reported.