SEATTLE, 29 July 2005 — An Algerian man, Ahmed Ressam, received 22 years for plotting to bomb the Los Angeles airport on the eve of the millennium. Meanwhile in New York, Yemeni Sheikh Mohammed Al-Moayad, arrested after an FBI sting operation in Germany in 2003 was sentenced to 75 years in prison yesterday for conspiring to support and fund Al-Qaeda and Hamas.

US District Judge John C. Coughenour said the successful prosecution of Ressam should serve not only as a warning to terrorists, but as a statement to the Bush administration about its terrorism-fighting tactics.

“We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel,” he said Wednesday. “The message to the world from today’s sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart.”

He added that the Sept. 11 attacks have made Americans realize they are vulnerable to terrorism and that some believe “this threat renders our Constitution obsolete... if that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won.”

US Attorney John McKay said he agreed with the judge’s comments that US courts are equipped to handle terrorism cases. He would not comment on the judge’s criticism of military tribunals and the handling of enemy combatants.

Al-Moayad, 56, was sentenced to 75 years and fined $1.25 million in federal court in Brooklyn. For each of five counts, he received 15-year sentences, each to be served consecutively.

Prosecutor Kelly Moore said during the trial that Al-Moayad had ties to Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, and had bragged about having “taught him about Islamic law.” The sheikh was arrested in Germany in 2003 after telling a federal agent posing as an American businessman that he would help him funnel money to militants, prosecutors said. He was later extradited to the United States.

On March 10, after a five-week trial, a federal jury found Al-Moayad and his aide, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, guilty of conspiring to provide material support and resources to Al-Qaeda between October 1999 and January 2003, and to Hamas between October 1997 and January 2003.

Al-Moayad was acquitted on a separate count of actually providing such support to Al-Qaeda, but was found guilty of providing material support and resources to Hamas.

During the sentencing, Al-Moayad insisted, “I have not done anything against the American people and I have no intention of doing anything against the American people.” “The American people are the flag of freedom,” he said. “God, my witness, I did not support Hamas.”

But Judge Sterling Johnson said videotaped evidence used to convict him was “chilling.” “He did provide material support, money, weapons and recruits to Hamas and Al-Qaeda,” the judge said.

Sentencing of Zayed was delayed until September.

Four days of videotaped meetings between the defendants and FBI undercover agents in a Frankfurt hotel in January 2003 formed the crux of the government’s case. In one meeting they were recorded promising more than $2 million to Hamas, the Palestinian militant group sworn to Israel’s destruction.

Prosecutors had argued the pair were involved in a long-running effort to funnel cash to the groups.

Al-Moayad’s lawyer, William Goodman, said that in Yemen it was not illegal to support Hamas.

“It’s excessive, the arrests, the prosecution, the trial and the sentence all are replete with injustice,” he told Reuters after the sentencing.

A key informant in the case, Mohamed Alanssi, set himself on fire outside the White House in November in an apparent suicide bid after saying he was mistreated by the FBI.

Lawyers for Al-Moayad and Zayed, 31, had argued they were entrapped in an “unfair and coercive” situation manipulated by the US government after the Sept. 11 attacks.