When a federal judge in Seattle sentenced Ressam to 22 years in 2005 — a drastic departure from the federal sentencing guidelines range of 65 years to life for the offenses on which he was convicted — the government appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
A 22-year sentence given an Al Qaeda-trained Algerian terrorist for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport was unreasonably lenient, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in overturning the term.
Disputes over the appropriate punishment for Ahmed Ressam have roiled the federal courts for more than a decade, as the young Algerian captured with a trunkload of explosives when he entered the United States initially cooperated with U.S. counterterrorism agents in exposing the inner workings of the global terror network and testifying against other captured militants.
But Ressam ceased cooperating with national security agents after two years, citing a fading memory of details and psychological damage from the harsh and isolated confinement at a federal lockup in Seattle.
When a federal judge in Seattle sentenced Ressam to 22 years in 2005 — a drastic departure from the federal sentencing guidelines range of 65 years to life for the offenses on which he was convicted — the government appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court threw out the 22-year sentence on procedural grounds in 2008, a ruling overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and sent back to the Seattle judge. After U.S. District Judge John Coughenour issued the same sentence three years ago, blaming Ressam’s decision to cease cooperating on the severe conditions of his detention, a 9th Circuit panel again struck down the term and sent the case to a different district court for resentencing.
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