August 9, 2008

Canadian get 13 years in Alaska pipeline bombing plot

A New Mexico judge has sentenced a Canadian man to 13 years in prison for plotting to blow up the Alaska oil pipeline in January 2000.

At the U.S. District Court in Santa Fe, N.M., Alfred Heinz Reumayr, 58, pleaded guilty in March to "aiding and abetting terrorism transcending national boundaries."

Reumayr was arrested in August 1999.

Authorities accused Reumayr of soliciting the help of former Green Beret and explosives expert Jim Paxton of Albuquerque to bomb the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

Prosecutors said Reumayr acquired explosives and sought to plant 14 timed bombs at three points along the pipeline in an attempt to disrupt energy supplies over the turn of the millennium.

Reumayr also planned to buy energy securities at low prices before the attack, and hoped to profit by selling them at a higher price amid market turmoil afterward, prosecutors said.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System runs north-south almost 800 miles from the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay to the Gulf of Alaska at Valdez.