Osama bin Laden's ex-London spokesman is ‘freed early from 25 year US jail term because he is at high risk from Covid due to his obesity' and 'will return to the UK within weeks'

Osama bin Laden's ex-London spokesman has been freed from a US jail to return to Britain on compassionate grounds - because he at high risk from coronavirus due to his obesity. 

Terror spin doctor Adel Abdel Bary, 60, was imprisoned over the devastating 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

He was arrested the next year and extradited to America where he struck a plea deal which ended with him being sentenced to 25 years behind bars in 2015.

Bary had been charged with 285 offences, eventually pleaded guilty to just a handful, including threatening to kill by means of explosive and conspiracy to murder US citizens abroad.

But the terrorist, who leased London offices in Kilburn lane for bin Laden’s propaganda activities, had 16 years taken off due to the time he had spent on remand. He was born in Egypt but granted asylum in Britain in the early 1990s.

He is the father of ISIS jihadi Abdel-Majed Abdel, who was arrested in Spain after travelling to Syria where he posed with the severed head of an Assad regime soldier.

Bary was supposed to be eligible for release from prison on October 28, but on Wednesday a judge ruled he could go early on compassionate grounds over coronavirus because he is obese and asthmatic - conditions that put him more at risk.

Adel Abdul Bary after he appeared at Bow Street Magistrates court back in July 1999

Adel Abdul Bary, then 54, pleading guilty in a US court in 2014 over terror charges laid in 1998

ADX Florence supermax prison where Adel Abdel Bary, 60, had been serving his sentence

He is currently in a US immigration and customs enforcement detention facility until he is sent back to the UK.

The move is understood to have prompted concern among UK officials who the Times report are even mulling over whether to ask if he can stay in America.

Bary cannot even be placed under a Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures because he has already served his sentence.

The US and the UK have agreed he will not be transferred home until arrangements on what will happen to him are iron out.

Adel Abdel Bary is the father of jihadi Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary and bin Laden's spokesman

After Bary was granted asylum he became the London cell leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad – a terror group which merged with al-Qaeda.

When the August 1998 African embassy bombings, Bary was responsible for transmitting to the media claims of responsibility.

In one of the court hearings leading to his sentence he cried in court after he admitted using fax machines and phone calls for the messages.

He said: "I arranged to transmit messages from media personnel to my co-conspirators, al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden.”

Bary had been serving his sentence in the ADX Florence supermax prison.

A Home Office spokesperson said: 'We do not routinely comment on individual immigration cases.'