Former MP and lawyer Nezar Ghorab has called on the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to press for the release of Adel Abdel Bary, a lawyer who has been imprisoned in England for 13 years. He was arrested in connection with the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Ghorab said Abdel Bary has been held without charges or trial. In an official letter, Ghorab accused the ministry of not performing its duties since the arrest of Abdel Bary 13 years ago.
He said the ministry should order the Egyptian embassy in London to care for and visit Abdel Bary in prison.
British authorities recently announced that they will extradite Abdel Bary, an Egyptian citizen who claimed political asylum in the UK, to the US for investigations on crimes related to US national security, in addition to other terrorist activities before September 11, including the Kenya and Tanzania bombings.
In June, Ghorab said that the Lawyers Syndicate’s human rights committee had sent a letter to the British ambassador in Cairo, the ministers of foreign affairs, justice and interior, the British parliament and the British lawyers syndicate demanding legal protection for Abdel Bary, and that he be considered a British national after his extradition to the US.
American authorities allege that Abdel Bary was an active member of Al-Qaeda, and was in contact with Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, now the leader of the group. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1995 in Egypt over a plot to blow up the Khan al-Khalili market.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
