Seventeen years after he circulated Osama bin Laden’s “fatwah” urging Muslims around the world to kill Americans, a former top al-Qaida insider was sentenced in New York Friday to 25 years in prison as a result of his conviction on international terrorism charges.
Adel Abdel Bary, 54, also was ordered to pay restitution of $33.8 million, including $7.5 million to families of victims of al-Qaida terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies.
“Adel Abdel Bary was a member of the London cell of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and worked closely with al Qaida leadership both before and after the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 to disseminate al Qaida threats against U.S. citizens and interests around the world,” said John Carlin, chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
The United Kingdom extradited Bary to the United States on Oct. 6, 2012. Last September, he pleaded guilty to three felony counts accusing him of conspiring to make a threat to kill, injure or damage property with an explosive; making such a threat, and conspiring to kill U.S. nationals.
Prosecutors said that in 1997 and 1998, Bary led the London Cell of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The terrorist group was led for years by a co-defendant in the case, Ayman al Zawahiri, who became al-Qaida’s declared global leader after a team of Navy Seals killed bin Laden during a nighttime raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011.
The Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida had merged by February 1998, when bin Laden issued his religious order calling for the death of Americans, anywhere they could be found.
On Aug. 4, 1998, according to papers that the Justice Department filed in the case, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad published a statement threatening to retaliate against America for its claimed involvement in arresting some of its members. Three days later, prosecutors said, al-Qaida operatives bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people.
It was Bary, prosecutors said, who transmitted via international telephone calls messages from Bin Laden and Zawahiri to the news media, including the contents of al-Qaida’s claims of responsibility and threats of future attacks.
Another co-defendant, Khalid al Fawwaz, is currently on trial before the same judge, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan.
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