Ahmed Ressam (; also Benni Noris; born May 9, 1967), also known as the "Millennium Bomber", is an Algerian al-Qaeda member who lived for a time in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 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. He was initially sentenced to 22 years in prison, after cooperating with the government in testifying about al-Qaeda and associated terrorist networks. In 2010, an appellate court held his sentence to be too lenient, and ordered that it be extended. In 2012, he was re-sentenced to 37 years' imprisonment. He is serving out his sentence at ADX Florence in Colorado.
Early life The eldest of seven children, Ressam was born in 1967 and grew up in a town west of Algiers; he graduated from high school in 1988. 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". He was arrested on immigration violations in Corsica, a territorial collectivity of France, in November 1993, and France deported him to Morocco on November 8, 1993. It banned him from returning for three years. Morocco determined that he was not Moroccan and returned him to France.
Faced with a March 1994 hearing, Ressam flew to Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Canada Ressam entered Canada on February 20, 1994, using a fake, illegally altered French passport in the name of "Anjer Tahar Medjadi".Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Security Intelligence Report concerning Mohamed Harkat, February 22, 2008 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. In his effort to obtain political asylum, he told the Canadian authorities a false story about having been subjected to abuse and torture in Algeria. He was released pending a hearing, and approved for up to three years of welfare benefits. His application for refugee status was denied on June 6, 1995, and his appeal was turned down.
On May 4, 1998, a warrant was issued for his arrest by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. At the time the warrant was issued, Ressam was in Afghanistan, attending a terrorist training camp. He evaded deportation thereafter by using a Canadian passport he had obtained in March 1998 by submitting a baptismal certificate; he used a stolen blank certificate, filling it in with the fake name, "Benni Antoine Noris".
He supported himself by stealing tourists' suitcases at hotels, pickpocketing and shoplifting, and through welfare benefits of C$500 per month. He was arrested four times, but never jailed. By 1999, Ressam had a Canadian criminal history for theft under C$5,000, an outstanding Canada-wide immigration arrest warrant, and an arrest warrant in British Columbia for theft under C$5,000.
Settling in the east end of Montreal, he lived with other Algerian immigrants in an apartment building on Malicorne Avenue, later identified as the local headquarters of a cell connected to the Armed Islamic Group, which had connections to Osama bin Laden. He was recruited into al-Qaeda. 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.
Terrorist training in Afghanistan Ressam became friends with Raouf Hannachi, an al-Qaeda member who served as the muezzin at Montreal's Assuna Mosque."The Terrorist Within, Chapter 7: Joining Jihad", Seattle Times, June 27, 2002, March 1, 2010 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. There, he contacted al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah in Peshawar, who was thought to supervise Afghan terrorist training camps funded and organized by Bin Laden. Abu Zubaydah arranged for Ressam to be transported over the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan in April.
Using the alias "Nabil", Ressam attended three camps for Islamic terrorists between March 1998 and February 1999. At Khalden Camp, which generally hosted 50–100 trainees at any time, he trained in light weapons, handguns, small machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs), explosives (including TNT, C4 plastic explosives, and black plastic explosives), poisons (including cyanide), poison gas, sabotage, target selection, urban warfare, tactics (including assassinations), and security. Trainees were from Jordan, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Turkey, Sweden, Germany, and France. During the five to six months he was there, he met Zacarias Moussaoui, later associated with the 9/11 attacks in the United States. He trained for six weeks in how to manufacture advanced explosives and make electronic circuits at Derunta training camp, outside Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
Abu Zubeida, in contrast, testified before his Combatant Status Review Tribunal that Khalden only trained fighters for "defensive jihad". 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.
A six-person terrorist cell that included Ressam was created, and tasked with meeting in Canada. They were to attack a U.S. airport or consulate before the end of 1999. The cell was directed by Abu Jaffar in Pakistan and Abu Doha in Europe.
Plot to bomb LAX
Ressam returned to Montreal in February 1999 under the name "Benni Noris", bringing $12,000 in cash he had obtained in Afghanistan to fund the attack. He also brought in hexamine (used as an explosive booster in the manufacture of explosives) and glycol, and a notebook with instructions for making explosives. While in Montreal, he shared an apartment with Karim Said Atmani, an alleged forger for the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria.
In April 1999, French investigators asked Canadian authorities to locate Ressam for questioning, but the Canadians were unable to locate him, as he was living under the name Benni Noris. In the summer of 1999, informed by Abu Doha that the other members of his cell had been unable to reach Canada due to immigration issues, he chose to continue without them.
In August 1999, he decided to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, the third-busiest airport in the world at the time. He was familiar with it and also thought it would be a politically and economically sensitive target. He planned to conduct a rehearsal using a luggage cart, putting it in a place that was not suspicious, and observing how long it would take for airport security to notice it. He planned to execute his plan in a passenger waiting area, using one or two suitcases filled with explosives.
In September 1999, Ressam purchased electronic equipment and components in order to build detonators, and made four timing devices. He recruited Abdelmajid Dahoumane, an old friend of his, to help him. In November, with Dahoumane's assistance, he bought urea and aluminum sulfate from nurseries, and mixed it together with nitric and sulphuric acid he stole from fertilizer manufacturers to create a TNT-like explosive substance.
He had met Mokhtar Haouari in early 1994, when he first arrived in Canada. Haouari was involved in fraudulent activity that included the theft and sale of stolen passports and creation of fraudulent credit cards, and Ressam sold him some stolen identity cards. 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. They left behind an acid burn stain on a table and corroded plumbing. In December Ressam called Abu Jaffar in Afghanistan to ask whether Osama bin Laden wanted to take credit for the attack, but did not get an answer. He also called Abu Doha in London, told him that he wanted to return to Algeria after the attack, and was assured he would receive money and documents.
Ressam arranged for the English-speaking Meskini to wait for him in Seattle. Meskini would assist him by helping him rent a car and communicate in English, driving him, and giving him a cell phone and money withdrawn with a stolen bank debit card.
Capture Ressam rented a dark green 1999 Chrysler 300M luxury sedan, and on the evening of December 13, Ressam and Dahoumane hid the explosives and all the related components in the wheel well in the car's trunk. 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.
Ressam took the car ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, Washington. He successfully passed through U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service checks in Victoria, and boarded the last ferry of the day for the 90-minute crossing to the U.S.
After the ferry docked in Port Angeles at 6 pm, Ressam intended to be the last car to leave the ferry. Although there had not been any intelligence reports suggesting threats, U.S. Customs inspector Diana Dean decided to have a secondary Customs search conducted of Ressam's car, saying later that Ressam was acting "hinky" and asked him to get out of the car.
At first, Ressam was not cooperative. Dean requested that he fill out a Customs declaration form, which he did, identifying as a Canadian citizen named Benni Noris. He had a passport, Quebec driver license, and credit cards all in the Noris name, as well as another Quebec driver license with the same date of birth, but in the name "Mario Roig". Royal Canadian Mounted Police later advised that the Mario Roig driver license was a fake, and did not exist in their records.
Another Customs inspector searched the car and found in the spare tire well:
ten green plastic garbage bags with of a fine white powder (which tests later identified as urea, used to manufacture explosives and fertilizer), two lozenge bottles filled with primary explosives hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) and cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX), two plastic bags with of a crystalline powder (later shown to be aluminium sulfate, used primarily as a desiccant, to keep things dry), two 22-ounce olive jars with of golden-brown liquid (later identified as secondary explosive ethylene glycol dinitrate (EGDN), an extremely explosive and volatile nitroglycerin equivalent that is twice as powerful as TNT), and four operational timing devices designed to detonate primary explosives, consisting of small black boxes containing circuit boards connected to Casio watches and 9-volt battery connectors.