The father of the British rapper suspected of beheading American Journalist James Foley was allegedly one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants and has a long history of spreading violence.
Adel Abdel Bari, 54, was handpicked by current al-Qaeda head Ayman al Zawahiri to be one of bin Laden’s top henchmen and lead his London cell of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in May 1996, the Daily Mail reports.
Bari’s son, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, is the key suspect believed to be the masked ISIS terrorist known as “John the Beatle.”
The 23-year-old fled his million-dollar home in London last year to wage jihad in Syria and recently tweeted a picture of himself holding up a severed head.
His father is currently awaiting trial at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan for the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people died.
Bin Laden and 20 others were also named in the US indictment for the case, but at least nine of those people are dead, six are already in prison and the others are either awaiting trial or on the run.
Bari had been extradited from Britain along with hook-handed terrorist Abu Hamza al-Masri. He had been allowed back into the UK because the native Egyptian was granted political asylum there in 1993.
Before he arrived in the US, Bari had already spent 14 years behind bars and had acquired a notorious reputation for terror.
At the time of his extradition, Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara referred to Bari as one of three men “at the nerve centers of al Qaeda’s acts of terror,” adding that “they caused blood to be shed, lives to be lost, and families to be shattered.”
He was locked up in Egypt and tortured following the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, according to the Guardian.
Once his son was born in 1991, Bari decided to apply for political asylum in Britain where his family joined him two years later.
After Bari was arrested in connection with the 1998 embassy bombings, attempts by British authorities to tie him to the terrorist acts proved unsuccessful, and he was soon released, the Daily Mail reports.
When the US applied for his extradition, Bari was soon arrested on the same charges the British were unable to prove.
The current indictment indicates that he had leased a London office on Beethoven Street that was transformed into bin Laden’s “media information office.”
The headquarters was supposed to establish a cover for terrorist activity in support of al Qaeda’s recruitment strategies, disbursement of funds and the retrieval of necessary goods.
The US indictment adds that the office also served as a hub for military messages and security reports involving several al Qaeda cells, including one in Kenya.
Bari has been charged with 213 counts of premeditated murder for the Nairobi bombing and 11 counts for the attack in Dar es Salaam.
He is also charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and numerous lesser charges.
At the time of Bari’s extradition, Manhattan US Attorney Prett Bharara referred to him as being one of three men “at the nerve centers of al Qaeda’s acts of terror, and they caused blood to be shed, lives to be lost, and families to be shattered.”
If convicted, Bari could face life in prison.
His trial is expected to start in November.