The man accused of a plot to detonate a bomb at the Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium has been sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Convicted of conspiracy to commit an international terrorist act, explosives smuggling and other criminal counts, Ahmed Ressam was sentenced in a Seattle courtroom Wednesday morning.

In his sentence, U.S. Western District Judge John Coughenour gave Ressam less than the 35-year sentence prosecutors had recommended. Ressam's lawyers argued for 12 years.

Reporting from outside the Seattle courtroom, CTV reporter Todd Battis said the judge made his decision shortly after lawyers wrapped up their final sentencing statements.

When he did, Battis said, Judge Coughenour made some pointed remarks.

"He made some very short, but very astute points, this is a signal to the world that the United States can deal with terrorists without arbitrary detention or denial of access to legal counsel," Battis told CTV Newsnet.

"So, some very strong words that were no doubt directed towards the U.S. government and its handling of other suspected terrorists."

Sentencing Considerations

Ressam, who had been hoping for a lesser sentence, saw those hopes diminished this week, after his lawyers acknowledged he would no longer help the U.S. government with the prosecutions of two accused co-conspirators in Canada and Britain.

"He is now at a point where he feels he can do no more," his lawyers wrote in a supplemental sentencing memorandum filed Monday. "Mr. Ressam knows what he did was wrong and hopes the court accepts his statement that he is truly sorry."

That meant there would be no more delays in sentencing the Algerian-born man arrested in Washington state as he drove off a ferry from Victoria, British Columbia in December 1999.

U.S. Customs agents discovered his trunk packed with bomb-making materials.

He was convicted of terrorist conspiracy and explosives charges in 2001, but sentencing was delayed when he began divulging details about terrorist training camps.

Citing deteriorating health after three years in solitary confinement, Ressam stopped cooperating by 2003.

The 38-year-old was due to be sentenced last April, but a U.S. district judge gave him an extra three months to resume cooperating.

According to his lawyers, Thomas Hillier and Michael Filipovic, before trial prosecutors had offered Ressam a 25-year sentence if he would simply plead guilty -- no assistance required.

After international terrorism investigators called Ressam's information "substantial" and "useful," they said, it was wrong to demand an even stiffer sentence.

Prosecutors countered that Ressam's decision to stop helping them jeopardized the prosecution of Haydar Abu Doha and Samir Ait Mohamed, the two other failed millennium bomb plot suspects awaiting extradition from Britain and Canada respectively.

Before his 1999 arrest, Ressam -- who trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan -- had been living in Canada since 1994.

He entered the country using a false French passport, later making a refugee claim and receiving welfare benefits. He lived in Montreal and obtained a Canadian passport using a forged Quebec baptismal certificate.