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Jamal Khalifa, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s
brother-in-law and once the chief financier of militant Islamic
groups in the Philippines, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in
Madagascar, wire reports said.
Agence France-Presse quoted
Khalifa’s brother as telling the Dubai-based Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya
television, that a gang of 25 to 30 people raided Khalifa’s room.
Khalifa, who traded in gems,
“was killed in cold blood while sleeping in his room,” his
brother, Malek, said.
The assailants stole all of
Khalifa’s belongings, the brother said by telephone from the Saudi
Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Al-Arabiya quoted unspecified
sources as saying the gunmen stormed a precious stones mine owned by
Khalifa at dawn Wednesday and killed him, making off with documents
and other possessions.
Malek Khalifa insisted that his
brother had no links with bin Laden despite being a brother-in-law
of the Saudi-born terror chief, who has been disowned by his family.
“He has no relation whatsoever
with Osama bin Laden. He had told all international [television]
channels that he has no links with Osama bin Laden’s organization
or any other organization,” Malek said.
World Trade Center
United States antiterror groups
say US authorities first glimpsed Khalifa in 1992, when Ramzi Yousef—convicted
of masterminding the 1993 first World Trade Center bombing—entered
the US with another companion, Ahmed Ajaj, who was arrested for
carrying bomb-making manuals.
Khalifa’s alias Abu Barra
appeared on the manual. Because INS holding cells were overcrowded,
Yousef was released and told to return in one month. He slipped away
to plot the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
In the Philippines, Khalifa was
better known as the bin Laden’s trusted lieutenant who managed
charities that provided funds for extremists, including the Abu
Sayyaf and, at one time, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The first extremists in the
Philippines were recruited from the 1,000 veterans who fought
against Afghanistan’s Russian invaders in the 1980s. They received
initial guerrilla training and indoctrination in fundamentalist
Islamic doctrines under the supervision of bin Laden, leader of the
al-Qaeda (The Base) network.
Charities
As early the 1990s, police
officials here said Khalifa fronted for al-Qaeda in the Philippines,
setting up nongovernment organizations (NGOs) to court “social
acceptance.”
NGOs identified with the bin
Laden network include the International Relief and Information
Center (IRIC), International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO),
Daw’l Imam Al Shafee, the Islamic Students Association of the
Philippines Inc. and the Mercy Foundation of the Philippines.
The IIRO was the target last
December of a freeze order by the Court of Appeals, following
representation by the US government and the local Antimoney
Laundering Council. The US government includes IIRO on its list of
“terrorist fronts.”
But many of the Khalifa charities
did engage in legitimate welfare activities like out‑reach
programs to depressed Muslim communities in Mindanao, where
government presence was, in the past, sketchy at best.
Khalifa was likewise linked to
charities and legitimate businesses in neighboring countries like
Singapore and Malaysia, including the Konsanjaya group whose top
officers were all tagged as having directly or indirectly
participated in several urban bombings. Funding from these networks
provided the engine for the activities of many NGOs but there is no
clear data on how much of these funds found their way to local armed
groups.
While in the country, Khalifa
married a local woman, Alice “Jameelah” Yabo, the sister of Abu
Omar, an employee of the IRRC.
Police reports say Omar funneled
money to an account of an Adam Salih, an alias of Yousef.
Yousef used the funds while
hatching a plan, called Bojinka, for the simultaneous bombings of
commercial jets. Yousef worked on Bojinka with Riduan Isamuddin, aka
Hambali, a senior al-Qaeda officer who is now in US custody.
Khalifa was arrested in Saudi
Arabia shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, but was
released.
He publicly condemned Osama bin
Laden after the September 11 and later publicly distanced himself
from the al-Qaeda.
--AFP, with
The Manila Times staff
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