Ahmed Ressam

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This photograph of Ahmed Ressam was seen on televisions across the U.S. following his arrest.

Ahmed Ressam (Arabic: احمد رسام) (born May 19, 1967) aka "The Millennium Bomber" was convicted and given a prison sentence of 22 years in a plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999.

Ressam was born in Algeria. He entered Canada in 1994 with a forged French passport. When immigration officials at the Montreal airport questioned him, he applied for political asylum, making up a story about persecution in Algeria. After settling in Montreal, he became a small-time criminal. At some point, he was recruited into al-Qaeda. After not attending his hearing for political asylum, his application for refugee status was denied and a warrant issued for his arrest. He evaded deportation by obtaining a passport using a false name, "Benni Noris."

Ressam used the passport to travel to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in 1998. There he learned skills in weapons, explosives, and poisons. He left in early 1999 carrying the precursors for making explosives and planning to attack a United States airport or embassy. He returned to Canada, and continued making bomb materials and false papers. He made the decision to attack LAX as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.

On December 14, 1999, Ressam boarded the M/V Coho at Vancouver Island and crossed the border at the Port Angeles, Washington ferry landing. Upon noticing that he appeared nervous, customs officers inspected him more closely and asked for further identification. Ressam panicked and attempted to flee. Customs officials then found nitroglycerin and four timing devices concealed in a spare tire well of his rented car. He was arrested by customs, and investigated by the FBI. He had shared a room in Canada with Abdelmajid Dahoumane, a suspected terrorist. A suitcase in the room which they lived in tested positive for chemicals used for making bombs. Ressam began cooperating with investigators in 2001, and revealed that al-Qaida sleeper cells existed within the United States. This information was included in the famous Presidential Daily Briefing delivered to President Bush on August 6, 2001, entitled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US".

Ressam's testimony was used by the Guantanamo Bay Combatant Status Review Tribunal to decide that friends of his, like fellow Algerian Ahcene Zemiri, should continue to be held as Unlawful Combatants.

On July 27, 2005, Ressam was sentenced to 22 years in prison plus five years of supervision after his release. On January 16, 2007, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed his conviction on one of the charges and sent the case back to a lower court judge to issue a new sentence and explain the rationale behind the original 22-year term.