| conviction = On all counts (April 6, 2001)

| conviction_penalty = 37 years imprisonment

| conviction_status = In prison

| occupation = Thief He received extensive terrorist training in Afghanistan.

He was convicted in 2001 of planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on New Year's Eve 1999, as part of the foiled 2000 millennium attack plots. In 2012, he was re-sentenced to 37 years' imprisonment. He is serving out his sentence at USP Florence High in Colorado. In 1984, Ressam traveled to Paris, France, for special medical treatments; it was his first time out of Algeria. Ressam failed the exams to college and applied for jobs with police or security forces but was turned down. Over the next four years he worked with his father in a coffee shop.

He left Algeria on September 5, 1992, due to the civil war in the country, entering France on a forged Moroccan passport in the name of "Nassar Ressam".

Canada

Ressam entered Canada on February 20, 1994, using a fake, illegally altered French passport in the name of "Anjer Tahar Medjadi". When immigration officials at the Montreal-Mirabel International Airport arrested him and confronted him about the altered passport, he divulged his real name and applied for refugee status. He was released pending a hearing, and approved for up to three years of welfare benefits. According to Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials, he was under surveillance as part of an investigation into a suspected terrorist ring from 1996 until he left the country. Hannachi returned to Montreal from Afghanistan toward the end of the summer of 1997, where he had trained for jihad at Khalden Camp. He told Ressam about the experience and jihad, encouraged him to train as well, and ultimately arranged a trip to the camp for him and his roommate Mustapha Labsi.

On March 17, 1998 Ressam, interested in joining jihad in Afghanistan, traveled from Montreal to Karachi, Pakistan using his fraudulent "Benni Noris" passport. He said trainees were explicitly instructed to attack only military targets, that it was an offense against Islam to kill or injure innocent civilians. He said Ressam would not have been sent to Khalden if he were thought to be someone who believed Islam justified attacking civilians. In early November he recruited Haouari to assist him in what he described as "some very important and dangerous business in the U.S.", by providing continued funding for his project, a credit card, and a fake ID. In addition, Haouari in turn recruited Brooklyn, New York-based Algerian illegal immigrant Abdelghani Meskini, a con man who he said was involved in bank fraud, to assist Ressam.

On November 17, 1999, Ressam and Dahoumane traveled from Montreal, Quebec, to Vancouver, British Columbia. They rented a small motel cottage at the 2400 Court Motel on Kingsway, where they prepared the explosives for LAX. On December 14, they left Vancouver, traveling to Victoria, British Columbia. Believing that he would draw less scrutiny alone, Ressam sent Dahoumane back to Vancouver by bus.

After the ferry docked in Port Angeles at 6 pm, Ressam intended to be the last car to leave the ferry.

At first, Ressam was not cooperative. His fingerprints were analyzed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who determined that he was "Ahmed Ressam", rather than "Benni Antoine Noris".

Following a 19-day trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, with approximately 120 witnesses, a jury found Ressam guilty on all counts of his indictment on April 6, 2001. That same day, he was convicted in absentia in France, and sentenced to five years for conspiring to commit terrorist acts there.

Ressam provided information to law enforcement officials of the U.S. and six other countries with regard to al-Qaeda's organization, recruitment, and training activities. Abu Zubaydah had been tortured while held by the CIA before being transferred to military custody and Guantanamo in September 2006. None of the evidence gained through coercive interrogation could be admitted to court.

thumb|upright|[[Zacarias Moussaoui]]

Ressam had trained with Zacarias Moussaoui at Khalden Camp and was able to identify him when asked. Moussaoui was an al-Qaeda member later implicated in the 9/11 plot. According to the Seattle Times, the judge used the occasion of Ressam's sentencing

<blockquote>to unleash a broadside against secret tribunals and other war on terrorism tactics that abandon 'the ideals that set our nation apart.'" The case went back to the district court for resentencing, where Judge Coughenour again sentenced Ressam to 22 years in prison.

On February 2, 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ressam's 22-year sentence was too lenient, and did not fit in the then-mandatory sentencing guidelines, which indicated he should have received at least 65 years, and up to 130 years, in prison.

In October 2012, Coughenour resentenced Ressam to 37 years' imprisonment. Ressam served his sentence at ADX Florence, the federal supermax prison, following his first sentencing. In September 2023, Ressam was transferred to USP Florence High.

References

  • "Superseding Indictment in U.S. v. Ressam" , January 20, 2000
  • The Terrorist Within, Seattle Times
  • Intuition keeps law enforcement one step ahead, US Customs Today, February 2000.
  • NBC - "Mostly luck" Video from NBC Nightly News Lisa Myers 2013