Abdulmutallab's sentencing in progress

We’re back in federal court in Detroit today — amid tight security – for the sentencing of failed underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is facing the possibility of several consecutive life prison terms for trying to blow up a Detroit-bound jetliner on Christmas Day 2009.
1:35 p.m. (&.35pm Nigerian time)
The defendant has just entered the courtroom. He’s dressed in a long white T-shirt, white skull cap and khaki pants with sneakers.

Judge Edmunds has just taken the bench and we’re getting under way.
1:23 p.m. (7.23pm Nigerian time)
The prosecution team, headed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel, just entered the courtroom. His team includes Catherine Corken and Michael Martin.
Abdulmutallab’s lawyer, Anthony Chambers, is leaning back in a chair at the defense table, watching spectators enter the courtroom while he waits for deputy U.S. marshals to being his client into the courtroom.
Kurt Haskell, a Taylor lawyer, says on his Web blog that he plans to speak at the sentencing. Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard the flight. They believe the government conspired with Abdulmutallab to carry a defective bomb onto the plane to the U.S. government a reason to install full-body scanners at airports.
“I wish I could take an hour to give a fully detailed statement about everything that happened, but Judge Edmunds has limited each passenger to 5 minutes,” Haskell wrote on his blog. “This will be the first time that I actually get to speak in Court regarding this matter. It will be interesting. I am sure the media will once again try and paint me as a nut job ‘conspiracy theorist.’ Frankly, I don’t care and I will speak the truth.”
1:15 p.m. (7.15pm Nigerian time)
The sentencing begins at 1:30 p.m. (7.30pm Nigerian time) before U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds.
Free Press staff writer Tresa Baldas will cover the hearing from inside the courtroom. I’m sitting in a media room watching on wide-screen monitors with other reporters and members of the public.
Today’s sentencing has attracted news reporters from around the nation. Several camera crews have set up outside the courthouse and bomb-sniffing dogs are roaming the corridors with their handlers to head off potential trouble. One dog just walked through Edmunds’ courtroom with his handler as court employees prepare for the hearing.
The courthouse has become terrorism central.
While Edmunds attends to Abdulmutallab on the eighth floor of the courthouse, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts is conducting a trial for seven members of a Lenawee County militia group — the Hutaree — who are accused of trying to overthrow the U.S. government. They are charged with plotting to kill an unidentified member of law enforcement and attacking police officers who attended the funeral with bombs.
Several passengers and crew members who were on Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit are expected to speak at today’s sentencing. But before they get a chance to speak, Edmunds must resolve lawyers’ last-minute requests that could affect the outcome.
Prosecutors want to show a view of a bomb similar to Abdulmutallab’s that was detonated at the FBI crime lab. They’re want to show Edmunds that the bomb was capable of causing heavy damage to the airliner, contrary to Chambers’ claims that there wasn’t enough explosive in the bomb to down the jet.
Abdulmutallab wants Edmunds to strike a sentencing report from the government’s martyrdom expert, Simon Perry, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has studied suicide bombers and says Abdulmutallab is a continuing threat to American citizens everywhere.
Abdulmutallab also wants Edmunds to declare that the penalties he’s facing are unconstitutional because they amount to cruel and unusual punishment since no one was hurt in the incident.
People are just starting to enter the courtroom.