Southern District Judge Lewis Kaplan (See Profile) made clear to admitted al Qaida spokesman Adel Abdel Bary that he was lucky to get a plea bargain that capped his sentence and could allow him to leave prison in less than nine years.

Kaplan told Bary, who issued statements for al Qaida claiming credit for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and vowed more attacks, “you are the beneficiary in my mind of a enormously generous plea bargain by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”