A U.S. prison granted slain terrorist Osama Bin Laden's aide Adel Abdel Bary "mercy" release because of his obesity, asthma and high risk of Covid-19.
Bary was sentenced in 2015 to jail for 25 years for in involvement in the 1998 terror attacks on Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies that left 224 people dead and over 5,000 injured. His release was scheduled for much later date but was granted an early release over his health concerns amid Covid-19 pandemic that affected jails across the U.S. However, his return to the U.K. remained a matter of concern for the Home Secretary, 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," the source reportedly said.
Prior to his prison time in the U.S., Bara fought extradition from custody in the U.K. for over a decade because of which his sentence was reduced by 16 years. He was extradited to the U.S. 2012 after prosecutors said he was a "senior member of the embassy terror cell" and that he confessed of being involved the two attacks. Bary, who fled his birth country Egypt in 1991 to the U.K., also acted as bin Laden's spokesman and spread al Qaeda propaganda from his London.
Bary's lawyers told a court in New York earlier this year that he was morbidly obese and that was "extraordinary and compelling" reason to grant him mercy. The court heard that he reportedly also suffered from asthma and was lodged in a medium-security prison in New Jersey, where about 10 percent of inmates were tested positive for coronavirus.
"It is not sufficient to keep him away from his family in what could be the final period of his life," U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said at the time.
