Letters: Enough justice for a bomb plotter

Re “LAX bomb plotter gets 37 years,” Oct. 25

I can’t decide if I am more horrified that my government kept a man alone in a cell the size of a small bathroom for 12 years or that its law enforcement officials stupidly couldn’t understand why that person, convicted in 2001 in a plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, would then stop cooperating with them.

Kudos to U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, who said, “I will not sentence a man to 50 lashes with a whip, and then 50 more for getting blood on the whip,” and denied the government’s request for a life sentence for Ahmed Ressam because of Ressam’s “obstructionism” in refusing to provide evidence against Al Qaeda suspects.

I would like to think our “intelligence” agents have learned something from this case. Unfortunately, it’s probably that it’s much easier to put perpetrators on the president’s “kill list” than to treat prisoners humanely.

Sarah S. Forth

Los Angeles

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