Embassy Bomber Asks for Early Release Under Law Trump Championed
Embassy Bomber Asks for Early Release Under Law Trump Championed
(Bloomberg) -- Adel Abdel Bary, sentenced five years ago to 25 years in prison for his role in the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, has requested compassionate release under a law championed by President Donald Trump.
Bary, who served as a spokesman for the terrorist group al-Qaeda, was arrested in 1999 and later extradited from the U.K. to the U.S., where he was convicted in the August 1998 bombings of the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania, and sentenced in February of 2015. A plea deal he struck with prosecutors gave him credit for the more than 14 1/2 years he was in custody since his arrest.
Despite his quarter-century term, he is due to be released on Oct. 28 and sent back to Britain, his lawyer said in a letter filed Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, citing the Bureau of Prisons and the terms of his client’s extradition.
Under those terms, Bary, 60, “will never walk the streets of any town or city in the United States,” the attorney, Andrew Patel, wrote to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan.
But Patel told the judge even another six weeks behind bars is too long for Bary, who he said suffers from asthma, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Mr. Bary’s continued incarceration now significantly increases his risk of infection, which could wreak disastrous health outcomes,” Patel wrote in seeking his client’s release under the 2018 First Step Act, which reduces prison sentences in extraordinary cases. The president frequently points to his role in forging the law to appeal to minority voters as he campaigns for re-election.
The almost simultaneous embassy bombings killed more than 200 people and wounded more than 4,000. The blasts marked an early chapter in the global terror campaign of Osama bin Laden.
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