Bin Laden spokesman Abdel Bary heading for Britain after US jail release – and there’s nothing UK can do to stop return
OSAMA Bin Laden’s spokesman is set to return to the UK after being released from a US jail – and Britain is powerless to stop him.
Adel Abdel Bary, 60, was banged up for his role in the terror attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and injured another 5,000 in 1998.
He was arrested in Britain a year later and extradited to the US after a lengthy legal fight.
He admitted three charges, including conspiracy to murder US citizens abroad, in a plea deal.
Bary was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2015 but consideration was given to the 16 years he had already spent in custody.
Bary is now set to return to Britain within weeks, according to .
He had been eligible for release from a US federal prison on October 28 but a judge allowed Bary to leave several weeks early on compassionate grounds due to coronavirus last Wednesday.
As a 60-year-old obese man with asthma he is considered to be at high risk for the virus.
He was moved to a US immigration and customs enforcement detention facility last Friday where he will stay until transferred to the UK.
British ministers and officials are said to be urgently reviewing the situation and all options remain on the table, including making a formal request to the US authorities that he remain in the country, although this is thought unlikely to be accepted.
Sources in Whitehall said that a Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM) notice, which places restrictions on individuals including their movements, was ruled out because Bary had completed his sentence.
We are very alive to the risk involved in his potential return
Whitehall source
Enforcing a temporary exclusion order, which can be used to stop suspects re-entering the country unless they agree to specific measures, has also been said to have been ruled out for the same reason.
The source said that Bary would be placed under priority investigation due to his involvement in the bombings and connections with al-Qaeda.
They said: “This is not someone who will simply just be walking the streets of Britain again. We are very alive to the risk involved in his potential return.”
Surveillance of Bary will be carried out if intelligence indicates he tries to contact old associates or has sinister intentions.
It’s believed Britain and the US has a 'gentleman’s agreement’ where he will not be transferred until adequate surveillance arrangements are put in place.
Bary was granted asylum in the UK in the early 1990s after allegedly being tortured in his homeland of Egypt.
He became the London cell leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) which merged with al-Qaeda in 1998, according to the US indictment against him.
Bary also rented premises in Kilburn, London, that became Bin Laden’s “media information office,” spreading propaganda and and provided “cover for activity in support of al-Qaeda’s ‘military’ activities, including the recruitment of trainees, the disbursement of funds and the procurement of necessary equipment”.
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Bary was responsible for transmitting claims of responsibility to the media in the wake of the Augsut 1998 African embassy bombings.
He also disseminated threats of future violence against American citizens by the terror group.
He was extradited to the US in 2012 with Abu Hamza, the former Finsbury Park mosque hate preacher.
His son, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, is also in custody suspected of being part of a terror network.
The former London rapper - who performed as Lyricist Jinn - was arrested in Spain earlier this year having travelled to Syria in 2013 to fight for ISIS.
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He became infamous after he posed with a severed head of an Assad regime soldier for a mocking social media post.
It had previously been suggested he was a possible member of a group of four British-born Isis fighters known as ‘The Beatles’ but this has been proved to be incorrect.
