Egyptian gets 25 years in prison for US embassy attacks

Egyptian ex-lawyer Adel Abdul Bary was sentenced to the maximum 25 years in prison on Friday for his role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Bary had pleaded guilty in September so as to gain what presiding Judge Lewis A. Kaplan called an "enormously generous plea bargain," sparing Bary lifetime incarceration.

Bary will likely spend eight more years in prison, as he has already been in British and American custody for 16 years. In court, Bary admitted to acting as conduit for communications between different conspirators in the bombings, including Osama bin Laden. He also helped spread the claims of responsibility and future terrorist threats.

Repentant terrorist

The 1998 bombings killed 213 people in Kenya and 11 in Tanzania and wounded over 5,000 people. Judge Kaplan bemoaned the "horror in this world" while handing down the sentence.

Bary and his lawyers tried to present a sympathetic image at trial, bringing up the torture the defendant suffered in Egypt prior to his move to London. He also expressed how sorry he was for his actions and that the families of his victims were "living with unbearable pain and sorrow that never completely goes away."

The former lawyer also claimed in a letter to the judge that he had repeatedly spoken out against violence in the intervening years. Prosecutors argued however that all of the case evidence was "startling to the contrary" of the defense's depiction of Bary as peaceful.

Bary's son, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, who used to be a rapper in London, is believed to have joined extremists fighting in Syria. Bary's alleged co-conspirator Khaled al-Fawwaz, a Saudi exile and purported chief of the London al-Qaeda cell, is currently still on trial in New York. A third possible accomplice, Abu Anas al-Libi, died in custody last month from natural causes.

es/kms (AP, AFP)