Terry Lee Loewen to serve 20 years in failed Wichita airport bomb plot

Terry Lee Loewen, the former avionics technician convicted in a failed suicide bomb plot at Wichita’s airport in 2013, will serve 20 years in federal prison on one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Others convicted of similar terrorism-related crimes often are subject to life imprisonment. But prosecutors, during his sentencing hearing on Monday afternoon, cited Loewen’s age and health issues as reasons for recommending a 240-month sentence.

Loewen, 60, listened as U.S. District Judge Monti Belot announced the sentence, which was proposed in his plea deal. He will be subject to supervision for life when he leaves prison.

During the hearing, defense attorney Tim Henry asked that Loewen be placed in the federal prison with the lowest security-level possible nearest to Wichita so he could continue to have visitors. He characterized Loewen as a “model inmate” during his stay at Sedgwick County Jail and said he did not need to be incarcerated in a maximum-security prison.

“Terry and his wife, Debbi, have a very, very close relationship, and it is one that is at the center of Terry’s hope that … he’ll be placed as close as he can” to home, Henry told the judge.

Loewen, dressed in orange Sedgwick County Jail garb and wearing short-cropped hair and shackles, whispered with his attorney before Monday’s hearing got underway.

His family, including his wife, sat behind him in the courtroom gallery. They turned down interview requests from news media after the hearing.

Before the judge imposed the sentence, Loewen apologized to his wife, two sons and extended family members.

“I love you all, and I realize the pain and suffering I’ve caused you is enormous,” Loewen said to his family as he faced the judge.

After thanking his attorneys for their work on the case, he added: “I do not ask for forgiveness because I deserve none.”

Monday’s sentencing ends a case that left Wichitans reeling in disbelief after federal officials announced Loewen’s arrest 20 months ago.

A former Hawker Beechcraft technician with some security clearance, Loewen stood accused of planning to carry out violent jihad, or holy war, at the then-Wichita Mid-Continent Airport by driving a van loaded with explosives through a security gate onto the tarmac.

Prosecutors have said his goal was to inflict maximum carnage at the airport just before Christmas. He planned to detonate the explosives himself and die in the attack.

FBI agents, who helped devise the plot in an undercover sting operation, started monitoring Loewen after he befriended someone on Facebook in May who routinely posted in support of radical or violent jihad. Loewen’s own “radical” postings heightened their concerns, according to federal court documents.

Ultimately, an undercover agent contacted Loewen online, and he “almost immediately … began expressing his desire to engage in violent jihad,” the documents say.

Loewen, who converted to Islam in 2008, described himself as “radicalized” to an undercover FBI agent in August 2013. He also told the agent he had downloaded “tens of thousands of pages” of information about jihad, martyrdom operations and ways to implement Sharia law, according to the federal court documents.

Authorities arrested and jailed Loewen early on Dec. 13, 2013, as he tried to unlock an airport security gate with his employee access badge. The explosives, secured with the help of the FBI, were inert.

Originally, prosecutors charged Loewen with three criminal counts: attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, attempted use of an explosive device and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. In a June 8 plea deal with prosecutors, he admitted to the attempted weapons use count. The two other chargers were dismissed.

Loewen’s defense attorneys, in hearings leading up his plea, argued the government’s actions were tantamount to entrapment and asked for the case to be thrown out before it went to a jury.

This story was originally published August 31, 2015 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Terry Lee Loewen to serve 20 years in failed Wichita airport bomb plot."