Osama bin Laden’s ex-spin doctor is back on UK streets after being freed early from US jail because he is too FAT to be safely locked up during coronavirus
- Adel Abdel Bary, 60, was jailed over the 1998 terror attacks that killed 228
- Morbidly obese Bary won early ‘mercy’ release because he’s at risk of Covid
- Arrived back at his £1m London flat to his wife yesterday from the United States
- Britain will not ship him back to his native Egypt over human rights obligations
Osama bin Laden’s former London spokesman is walking the streets of Britain again today after being released from a US jail because he is too fat to be locked up safely amid the pandemic.
Adel Abdel Bary, 60, was imprisoned over the devastating 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.
The terror propagandist won early ‘mercy’ release because his morbid obesity puts him at risk of Covid.
He walked free from a customs enforcement detention facility in New Jersey on Tuesday and flew back to the UK yesterday.
The Egyptian national, whose son is an ISIS jihadi rapper, has returned to live with his wife Ragaa, 59, at their £1 million council flat in Maida Vale, London.
Adel Abdul Bary after he appeared at Bow Street Magistrates court in July 1999. He returned to the United Kingdom on Wednesday after being freed from a New Jersey detention centre
Adel Abdul Bary, then 54, wipes away tears while pleading guilty in Manhattan in in 2014 over terror charges related to the 1998 bombings in Africa
Bary was arrested in the UK in 1999 and extradited to the States in 2012 where he struck a plea deal which ended with him being sentenced to 25 years behind bars.
He was charged with 285 offences, but pleaded guilty to just a handful, including threatening to kill by means of explosive and conspiracy to murder US citizens abroad.
The terrorist, who leased London offices in Kilburn Lane for bin Laden’s propaganda activities, had 16 years taken off due to the time he had spent on remand.
He was born in Egypt but granted asylum in Britain in the early 1990s.
David Cameron’s government is reported to have struck a deal with Washington to accept Bary back into Britain upon his release to avoid a human rights breach.
Bary would likely be tortured and killed if deported back to Egypt.
A security source told The Sun: ‘His return remains a huge headache for the Home Secretary.
‘She is intent on ridding the country of threats, but here’s a notorious terrorist dumped right on her doorstep.’
Adel Abdel Bary is the father of jihadi Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary and bin Laden’s former spokesman
He is the father of ISIS jihadi Abdel-Majed Abdel, who was arrested in Spain after travelling to Syria where he posed with the severed head of an Assad regime soldier.
Bary had been serving his sentence in the ADX Florence supermax prison in Colorado before being shipped over to the east coast and then onto London.
He will not be placed under Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures because he has already served his sentence.
His lawyers argued that his morbid obesity was an ‘extraordinary and compelling’ reason to let him go.
Sources told The Sun he will almost certainly claim welfare from the state and be granted security monitoring for his safety, costing the taxpayer tens of thousands.
After Bary was granted asylum he became the London cell leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad – a terror group which merged with al-Qaeda.
ADX Florence supermax prison where Adel Abdel Bary, 60, had been serving his sentence before being released to a holding facility on the east coast and then being moved onto London
Following the August 1998 African embassy bombings, Bary was responsible for transmitting claims of responsibility to the media.
In one of the court hearings leading to his sentence he wept before the judge after he admitted using fax machines and phone calls for the messages.
He said: ‘I arranged to transmit messages from media personnel to my co-conspirators, al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden.’