Peninsula Daily News news services
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court ruled today that the 22-year prison sentence is too lenient for al-Qaida-trained terrorist Ahmed Ressam, who was captured in Port Angeles coming off the ferry with a carload of explosives in 1999.
Ressam was plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport at the turn of the millennium.
A divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out the sentence today. It also removed the Seattle trial judge, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, from the case and assigned the resentencing of Ressam to another federal judge.
Customs inspectors at the Port Angeles port of entry at the foot of Laurel Street arrested Ressam on Dec. 14, 1999, after he entered the United States from Canada on the MV Coho ferry with a rental car loaded with explosives and bomb-making materials, including electronic timers.
Among the Customs inspectors who captured Ressam after a foot chase through downtown Port Angeles was Mike Chapman, who is now a Clallam County commissioner.
Coughenour cited Ressam’s cooperation with investigators in meting out the original sentence. But because Ressam recanted his cooperation after two years, the appeals court said today that he deserves a longer sentence.
Federal prosecutors had sought a minimum 35-year sentence, urging a life sentence for the man who admitted to training in Osama bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan and was captured nearly two years before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made bin Laden a household name.
