<p>Eric Rudolph's victims described him Monday as a small man with a big bomb who cowardly fled amid his carnage. They confronted the serial bomber before a judge ordered him to serve a life of isolation behind bars as a prisoner of the goverment he professed to hate.</p><p>Just before his sentence was handed down, Rudolph apologized to the victims of the 1996 Olympics blast, saying "I would do anything to take that night back."</p><p>He said he had wanted to anger and embarrass the federal government because it does not prohibit abortions, and that he only wanted to harm government workers.</p><p>"I can't begin to truly understand the pain that I have inflicted on these innocent people," Rudolph said, reading from a prepared statement.</p><p>"To those victims, I apologize," he said.</p><p>Rudolph addressed the court from his seat after 14 victims and relatives told of the horror he caused and their wishes that he suffer for the rest of his days. A 10-minute video tribute to Alice Hawthorne the woman killed in the Olympics blast, also was shown.</p><p>Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison without parole _ four consecutive life sentences plus 120 years _ and $2.3 million in restitution for a series of bombings across the South, including the Olympics blast, two other bombings in the Atlanta area and an explosion in Birmingham, Ala.</p><p>The Olympics bombing killed Hawthorne, 44, of Albany, Ga., and injured 111. A 1998 bombing at a women's clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killed a police officer and maimed a nurse. The other Atlanta bombs, detonated in 1997 at an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub, injured 11.</p><p>"I do take some professional satisfaction of being part of a process that prevents you from killing or hurting anybody else," U.S. District Judge Charles A. Pennell told Rudolph as he announced the sentence.</p><p>Rudolph smirked and rolled his eyes during the testimony of some of the victims, especially those refuting his anti-abortion, anti-homosexual beliefs. He laughed under his breath when one of the victims said it was appropriate that when authorities finally found Rudolph he was scavenging for food from a trash container.</p><p>Hawthorne's widower pointed out that Rudolph's sentencing landed on the day the Hawthornes would have celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary.</p><p>"Every anniversary has been filled with anger, weeping and sorrow, but this anniversary brings to an end a very painful and emotional chapter in this family," John Hawthorne said. "This is the day Alice can rest, for justice is finally being served."</p><p>Alice Hawthorne's 22-year-old daughter, Fallon Stubbs, who was seriously wounded by the Olympic bomb, offered forgiveness to Rudolph as he looked directly at her in the courtroom.</p><p>"In all honesty Mr. Rudolph, I would not be who I am today without you," said Stubbs, who was 14 at the time of the bombing. "I have learned to be a tolerant person because of you, to accept people who are different than I am, and embrace their differences."</p><p>Rudolph, who was wearing a business suit, stared at both Hawthorne and Stubbs during their statements. However, he did look away once when Hawthorne became emotional.</p><p>Rudolph received his first life sentence last month for the Alabama bombing. The sentences in both states were part of a plea deal reached in April between Rudolph and the government he professed to despise.</p><p>Federal prosecutors made the deal with Rudolph _ who had faced a possible death sentence _ in exchange for revealing the location of more than 250 pounds of stolen dynamite he had buried in the woods of western North Carolina.</p><p>Hawthorne said the thought of Rudolph being executed _ "peacefully going to sleep on a guerney with a smile on his face" _ was unacceptable to him. He said he was pleased to know that Rudolph instead will "never again see the beauty of flowers and trees" and will sit in a prison cell for years.</p><p>"May God bless you with a long life," he told Rudolph.</p><p>Rudolph will serve his sentence at the maximum security federal prison in Florence, Colo. The prison about 90 miles southeast of Denver also is home to Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Richard Reid, who tried to ignite a shoe bomb on a trans-Atlantic flight; Ramzi Yousef, who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and Terry Nichols, who helped carry out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.</p><p>Rudolph was identified as the Olympic bomber after the Birmingham blast and spent the next five years on the run in the North Carolina wilderness, employing the survivalist techniques he learned as a soldier. He was captured in 2003 while scavenging for food behind a grocery store in Murphy, N.C.</p><p>Some 300 seats were being set aside for Monday's hearing. A closed-circuit television carried a live feed from the main courtroom to an overflow courtroom during the hearing.</p><p>As he has in the past court appearances, Rudolph portrayed himself as a devout Christian motivated by his hatred of abortion and a federal government that lets it continue.</p><p>Hawthorne called Rudolph a coward for trying to kill others in the name of the anti-abortion movement, instead of working through peaceful means to change the law.</p><p>"You are a very small man, and like other men (of small stature), you have a Napoleonic complex and a need to compensate for what you lack," he said. "Small man, big bomb."</p><p>----</p><p>Associated Press writers Dick Pettys and Doug Gross contributed to this report.</p>
