Peninsula Daily News news sources
SEATTLE — The U.S. Attorney’s Office today appealed the 22-year sentence imposed on convicted terrorist Ahmed Ressam, who was captured in Port Angeles on Dec. 14, 1999.
Customs inspectors in Port Angeles discovered Ressam with bomb-making materials in his rented car off the MV Coho ferry from Victoria. After a short foot chase, they arrested him, and other authorities whisked him to Seattle. The bomb materials were exploded harmlessly at an undisclosed location near Port Angeles.
Although it was later determined that the al-Qaida-trained Ressam was plotting to bomb the Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, city officials in Seattle canceled millennium celebrations at the Seattle Center for fear of a terrorist plot at the time.
He was convicted in federal court, but an appeals court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge John Coughenour for resentencing because of his failure at Ressam’s original sentencing in 2005 to clearly enumerate how he had calculated Ressam’s sentence under federal guidelines.
Coughenour rejected a request from prosecutors at a Dec. 3 hearing that Ressam be sentenced to life in prison because he has stopped cooperating with investigators, instead re-imposing a 22-year sentence.
At the time, prosecutors said they intended to appeal, which they did Tuesday just before month’s end.
