Jamal Khalifa's Life and Death Secrets

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By J.M. Berger (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: J.M. Berger - Writer

The life of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, was wrapped in a cloak of mystery, and his death only adds fuel to the fire.

Born in Medina, Saudi Arabia, in 1957, Khalifa served alongside Osama bin Laden as a volunteer in the jihad against the Soviet Union. Khalifa said the two were best friends and roommates during that time.

After that, however, his story branches off into two conflicting accounts.

According to Khalifa, his association with bin Laden ended there, in the late 1980s, after which he worked as an international businessman and philanthropist. In his version of the tale, he never had anything to do with any sort of terrorist ever again.

According to just about everyone else, Khalifa became a top financier for al Qaeda, with ties to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to take down nearly a dozen U.S.-bound airliners with undetectable bombs created by the world's most dangerous terrorist, Ramzi Yousef.

On Tuesday, both stories came to an end when Khalifa was assassinated by a group of 25 to 30 gunmen, who burst into the Madagascar house where he was sleeping and killed him, according to family members.

During the late 1980s, Khalifa traveled to the Philippines and provided funding and training to the Abu Sayyaf Group, an terrorist-criminal enterprise in the southern part of the country. He also supported Muslim separatist and evangelical movements all over the region, using a network of charity organizations and legitimate businesses to hide his activities, according to U.S. and Philippines authorities.

In 1993, FBI agents investigating the World Trade Center bombing discovered several documents bearing Khalifa's name or alias, including a bomb-making manual. As the case slowly moved toward trial, other links emerged, and Khalifa was named as an unindicted co-conspirator supporting the terrorist cell that staged the bombing.

On Dec. 1, 1994, Khalifa traveled to Morgan Hill, Calif., a 20-minute drive away from an Egyptian Islamic Jihad cell based in Santa Clara. He claimed he was visiting a relative. A member of that cell, Ali Mohamed, was an FBI informant under investigation for his own role in the World Trade Center conspiracy.

Court records show Mohamed spoke with an FBI agent and a U.S. attorney investigating the Trade Center case in New York on Dec. 9. On Dec. 16, the State Department revoked the Saudi's visa.

Khalifa was arrested at the San Francisco airport as he prepared to leave the country. His traveling companion was a senior al Qaeda operative named Mohamed Loay Bayazid, who had tried to purchase uranium on behalf of al Qaeda just one year earlier, according to court testimony.

The FBI searched Khalifa's luggage and found a treasure chest of intelligence -- terror training manuals written by Khalifa himself, and more importantly, address and phone books with listings for al Qaeda's terrorist elite, including bin Laden himself.

Agents also found clues to the location of the world's most dangerous terrorists -- Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of World Trade Center bombing, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, future architect of the September 11 attack.

Khalifa's notes contained the pager number for Wali Khan Amin Shah, a close associate of bin Laden who was conspiring with Yousef and KSM to bomb a dozen U.S. bound airliners over the Pacific Ocean during a two-day spree scheduled for January 1995.

Phone records showed that Khalifa had called Khan's apartment several times in November. Yousef was building bombs for the attack in a different apartment at the same address, a few floors up. A source close to the investigation said an address for the location was also found on Khalifa's luggage.

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http://intelwire.egoplex.com/

J.M. Berger is a freelance reporter, researcher and producer with experience in print, television, radio and film. He also runs the terrorism Web site INTELWIRE.com (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
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