Homeland Security

DATE=8/22/05

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ATLANTA/OLYMPIC BOMBING (L-ONLY)

NUMBER=2-326695

BYLINE=MIKE COOPER

DATELINE=ATLANTA

HEADLINE: Atlanta Olympic Bomber Gets Life Sentence

INTRO: The man responsible for a bombing at the 1996 Olympics in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta, was sentenced to life in prison Monday for that attack and several others. Mike Cooper reports from Atlanta for VOA that more than a dozen bombing victims were allowed to confront Eric Rudolph as he appeared in federal court.

TEXT: Eric Rudolph was given four life sentences for the 1997 bombings of an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub, and an explosion at a late-night rock concert during the 1996 Summer Olympics that killed one person and injured 111 others.

Before he was sentenced by a federal judge to a maximum security prison with no possibility of parole, Rudolph apologized, but only for the Olympic bombing, saying he would do anything to "take that night back (undo the damage)."

Fallon Stubbs, who was 14-years-old when her mother was killed in that explosion, said Rudolph seemed humble but not sincere.

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"He is apologetic for the way that it happened, that someone did die in Atlanta in Centennial Olympic Park. But he's not apologetic for the other victims that he caused their injuries and their lives. So, just for that one incident, for you being apologetic for one part and not the other, is not enough."

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Rudolph, who eluded authorities for five years by hiding in the southern foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, said he set off the bombs because he opposed abortion, and wanted to embarrass the government.

Last month, he was also given a life sentence in (the southern state of) Alabama for the 1998 bombing of a women's health clinic. A police officer was killed and a nurse was maimed in that instance. (SIGNED).

NEB/MC/TW/KBK