Osama bin Laden's right-hand man Adel Abdel Bary freed from US jail for being 'obese', extradited to UK
Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man was released from a US jail because he was too overweight and has been flown to the UK. Adel Abdel Bary, 60, who plotted explosions that killed more than 200 people, was granted early “mercy” release after he pleaded that his life was at risk from COVID-19 due to his weight. He was a convicted terrorist who was bin Laden’s spokesman in Europe. He was freed from a New Jersey prison on Tuesday and flew overseas the following day.
It is noteworthy that his son, Abdel Majed Abdel Bary, is one of the most wanted ISIS terrorists in Europe and was caught in Spain in April this year. The former rap artist, who posed with a severed head in Syria and promised death to all westerners, left the UK in 2013 to join ISIS. He left the group two years later, and investigators believe entered Spain a few days before his arrest in Almeria.
Abdel Bary has been reunited with his wife, Ragaa, 59, who lives in a $1.3 million council apartment in Maida Vale, North West London. He was granted asylum in Britain in 1997 and as a result, US officials could not block his return. Officials cannot send him back to Egypt, where he was born and raised, because he could be at risk of death or torture.
Bary's return to the UK has been denounced by many as reports emerge that the UK government will likely give him a taxpayer-funded house in an effort to control his movements in the country.
"His return remains a huge headache for the Home Secretary. She (Priti Patel) is intent on ridding the country of threats, but here’s a notorious terrorist dumped right on her doorstep.” a security source said on December 9.
Bary initially came to the attention of Egyptian authorities in 1981 when he was imprisoned and tortured after President Anwar Sadat's murder in October that year. He eventually applied for political asylum in Britain during his return trip from the US to Egypt through the UK in 1991. Bary was granted asylum by the Second Major ministry in 1993.
Five years later two al-Qaeda truck bombs killed 224 at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He was a senior member of a terror cell and had claimed responsibility for the bombings, prosecutors said. He was finally extradited to the United Stated in 2012 and got 25 years after pleading guilty to his role in the bombings. His fight against extradition was backed by ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn but he was not successful.
A New York court heard this year from his lawyers that his morbid obesity was an “extraordinary and compelling” reason for mercy and a judge agreed. Bary, who is obese and suffers from asthma, was stationed in a medium-security prison in New Jersey where nearly 10 percent of inmates had tested positive for coronavirus, according to his lawyer.
Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, after Navy Seals were sent from Afghanistan to Pakistan to execute the mission under the direction of former President Barack Obama. Last month we reported that President-elect Joe Biden, the-then vice president, reportedly advised Obama to wait on the Laden compound raid because he was worried the mission might fail, as revealed by the former president's new memoir, 'A Promised Land.'
The former president said that Biden suggested that Obama should take more time to make a decision on the raid, saying: "Don't go." The former vice president reportedly also told Obama to "follow your instincts," The Guardian, which obtained a copy of the memoir, reported. The book stated that at the time the president's top advisers were debating whether their intelligence was strong enough to attack.
When Obama eventually decided to send the Navy Seals in the compound, Biden immediately supported him, the book states. Biden has often been denounced in the political world for his advice to Obama on the bin Laden compound attack. The former vice president, earlier this year, defended himself, claiming that he did not tell Obama not to go for the raid to take out bin Laden.