SEATTLE – The sentencing of millennium bomb plotter Ahmed Ressam has been postponed nearly a year, three months longer than government lawyers sought, to allow time for him to testify against others accused of terrorism.
Ahmed Ressam, 34, an Algerian national, was scheduled for sentencing next Friday, but the date was postponed Thursday by U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour to next March 13.
Defense lawyers did not oppose the delay but asked last week that Coughenour require the government to provide regular reports “detailing the extent and value of Mr. Ressam’s cooperation.”
Ressam was convicted last April in Los Angeles of nine charges, including smuggling and terrorist conspiracy, in what investigators described as a plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport at the peak of travel around Jan. 1, 2000.1999.
He was arrested Dec. 14, 1999, at Port Angeles, Wash., while entering the country from Canada in a car with a trunk full of explosives and remains in federal detention.
No date has been set for some of the trials in which Ressam might testify, and cases involving extradition could take years to go to trial, his lawyers wrote.
“Debriefings have been extensive, occurring on dozens of occasions and spanning many hours,” but the government has failed to provide information and Ressam is concerned about when he might be sentenced, they wrote.
Hoping to reduce a prison term that could run 60 to 130 years under federal guidelines, Ressam has been giving information on other cases.
His testimony helped convict Mokhtar Haouari, 32, of supplying fake identification and cash for the millennium bomb plot. Haouari was sentenced in New York in January to 24 years in prison.
Unnamed sources have said Ressam could testify Richard Reid, accused of trying to detonate explosives in his shoes on a Paris-to-Miami flight in December, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person indicted in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
His cooperation also was said to have been crucial in indictments against Abu Doha, described as an operative of Osama bin Laden in London, and Samir Ait Mohamed, an Algerian accused of plotting to bomb a Jewish neighborhood in Montreal. Extradition proceedings against both are pending.
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