2:34 p.m.
Edmunds said she has received eight requests for restitution from passengers.
She said about half of them were for specific expenses. For example, she said one passenger had to give up his jacket to the FBI to be tested for explosives.
She is making a tentative award to several people not to exceed $400 in each case.
Edmunds said Abdulmutallab likely will never be able to pay much restitution.
Now, it’s Abdulmutallab’s turn to speak.
2:27 p.m.
Kurt Haskell just stepped to the podium.
Choking up, he praised Mason for putting out the fire on the plane and saving everyone’s lives.
He said he and his wife were on the flight returning from an African safari. While sitting at the airport, he said he saw Abdulmutallab being escorted through security by a man in a tan suit who spoke perfect English.
The airline gate worker initially refused to let Abdulmutallab to board until the man in the tan suit intervened.
“Little did I know that Umar would try to kill me,” he said.
He said the incident has changed his life.
He said passengers were kept on the plane after it landed in Detroit without any concern about the explosives on the plane. He said passengers were taken into the terminal without anyone checking their bags or for possible accomplices.
It soon became obvious that the FBI wasn’t concerned about anything he had to say, including the man in the tan suit.
He said Abdulmutallab was allowed to board the plane without a passport and going through security. He said he’s disappointed that the U.S. government allowed Abdulmutallab to get onto the plane.
“Regardless of how media and government try to shape this case, I am convinced that Umar was given an intentionally defective bomb by a U.S. agent… to stage a false terrorist attack to be used to implement various government policies. It really saddens me that the government won’t admit its role in the event. Because of this case, I will never trust anything the government says, ever.”
Then, Haskell turned to Abdulmutallab.
“Umar, you are not a Muslim martyr. You are merely a government patsy.”
He urged Edmunds to give Abdulmutallab the maximum sentence.
Haskell’s wife, also urged Edmunds to give Abdulmutallab the maximum sentence.
“I have never been that scared in my life,” she said, adding that she still has nightmares.
2:14 p.m.
Theophilus Maranga, a New York immigration lawyer and passenger on the flight, just stepped to the podium.
“I don’t believe in killing anyone in the name of God,” he told Edmunds, adding that he cannot understand why anyone would want to do it.
He said he is afraid to fly because of the incident.
“My family prays for you,” he told Abdulmutallab.
Maranga has sued Delta Airlines and Air France-KLM for $10 million for injuries he says he suffered while subduing Abdulmutallab on the flight.
2:11 p.m.
Five people have asked to speak, Edmunds said. She’s giving them five minutes each to speak.
The first to speak is Lamare Mason, a Northwest Flight attendant based on Detroit, who put out the flames when Abdulmutallab tried to detonate the bomb.
“Since that day, my life has changed,” he told Edmunds. “I had a dream job traveling the world. This man has stolen and robbed me of the pleasure of going to work.”
He said he wakes up in night sweats because of the incident and has been in therapy since the incident.
“His intentions were to end our lives,” he said.
Shama Chopra, a passenger from Montreal and mother of two, said she has had to overcome the fear of flying since the incident.
“As a mother, I feel for you,” she told Edmunds. “But you had no right to take my life.”
She said terrorists have wreaked havoc worldwide and they need to be brought to justice.
‘Today is your turn and justice will be served,” she said as Abdulmutallab looked down at the paperwork in front of him.
Amazingly, she just handed Chambers a rosary to give to Abdulmutallab.
2:02 p.m.
Edmunds just took up the next issue, challenges to the pre-sentence investigation report.
Chambers says there was a plea agreement in the works with Abdulmutallab before Chambers came into the case.
Chambers is trying to exclude from the pre-sentence report statements Abdulmutallab made to the government in the weeks after the bombing attempt. He said Abdulmutallab made the statements because he thought a plea agreement was in the works.
Tukel says the statements are fair game.
Tukel says an agreement was offered to Abdulmutallab and he rejected it. He says the statements are admissible.
Edmunds is allowing the statements.
1:50 p.m.
Edmunds is taking up the second motion – that the mandatory life sentences against Abdulmutallab constitute cruel and unusual punishment and, therefore, are unconstitutional.
Chambers just asked her to strike down the mandatory life sentences. Tukel said she shouldn’t.
Edmunds just denied the motion on the basis of previous rulings from the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
While Edmunds ruled, Abdulmutallab seemed preoccupied with a pencil and legal pad at the defense table.
U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade is watching the proceedings from the spectators’ area.
1:45 p.m.
Edmunds is starting to take up the motions from the prosecution and defense.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Martin says he wants to play a 52-second videotape of the explosion of 200 grams of the explosive PETN on a sheet of aluminum suspended on two wooden sawhorses. He’s showing a slide of a portion of Abdulmutallab’s bomb. Although the government only recovered 76 grams of PETN from Abdulmutallab’s bomb, the government estimates that the original bomb contained 200-300 grams of the explosive.
Martin said the demonstration is to justify consecutive mandatory life sentences for the defendant.
Abdulmutallab is deferring to Chambers to respond.
“There are two problems with their approach,” Chambers says. He says the video won’t show what would have happened on the airline and says the video is irrelevant, since Abdulmutallab has already pleaded guilty.
“We don’t know how many grams were there and how they were packed,” Chambers says. He says the video is highly speculative, even though the government planned to use it as an exhibit at trial.
Edmunds just granted the government’s request.
Although some of Chambers’ points are well taken, she said, it’s helpful in establishing the seriousness of the charges.
1:35 p.m.
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.
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.
The sentencing begins at 1:30 p.m. 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 potentia
l 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.