Mohammed Jamal Khalifa ()

(1 February 1957 – 31 January 2007) was a Saudi businessman from Jeddah who married one of Osama bin Laden's sisters. He was accused of funding terror plots and groups in the Philippines in the 1990s while head of the International Islamic Relief Organization branch there.

Khalifa married a local woman, Alice "Jameelah" Yabo, and frequently exited and entered the country for "business" reasons. Yabo was the sister of Ahmad al-Hamwi, better known as Abu Omar who was a top leader in the militant group Abu Sayyaf.

According to Zachary Abuza, Khalifa established several charities and Islamic organizations in the Philippines ostensibly for charity and religious reasons, but which channelled money to extremist groups. One example of his syphoning off of charitable funds, according to Newsweek, was his reporting to his "Saudi sponsors" that he had built 33 orphanages across the southern Philippines when in fact Khalifa had set up only one institution for orphans. What was left of the Benevolence International Corporation allegedly gave logistical support to terrorists, and has been accused of assisting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Bojinka plot (of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Yousef to blow up 11 American jetliners killing 4,000 people in early 1995).

According to the Philippines National Security Advisor, Roilo Golez, Khalifa "built up the good will of the community through charity and then turned segments of the population into agents."

According to Abuza, while Philippine government claimed to have shut down all the charities run by Khalifa to finance Abu Sayyaf, a senior Philippine intelligence official complained to him, "We could not touch the IIRO" because "intense diplomatic pressure" from Saudi Arabia kept the charity open. "Their most important source of leverage was the visas and jobs for several hundred thousand Filipino guest workers", which they could withhold if the Philippine government angered them.

Deportation and release

The first record U.S. authorities had of Khalifa reportedly came in 1992, when his alias "Barra" appeared on a bomb-making manual carried by Ahmed Ajaj who entered the United States on a false passport.

On 1 December 1994, Khalifa met Mohamed Loay Bayazid, the president of Benevolence International Foundation, in the United States. Khalifa and Bayazid were arrested on December 14, 1994, in Mountain View, California on charges related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Khalifa was planning to fly to the Philippines.

When the FBI looked inside Khalifa's luggage, they found manuals in Arabic on training terrorists, which covered subjects such as bomb-making and other violent activities. Khalifa claims that his possession of the materials was innocent. They found a personal organizer with several contacts. One phone number was for Wali Khan Amin Shah, a member of the Manila cell, which was plotting Operation Bojinka at the time. There was also a listing for an unknown man, who might have been Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Khalifa was placed in solitary confinement and the contents of his luggage were logged and edited.

Khalifa was held without bail for several months, before being deported to Jordan.

Death

On 31 January 2007, the day before his 50th birthday, Khalifa was killed while visiting a gemstone mine he owned in Sakamilko, near the town of Sakaraha in southern Madagascar. Reports state that around 25 to 30 armed men raided Khalifa's residence in the middle of the night, attacked him with various weapons, and removed his computer and other intelligence materials. His family came to believe that he was assassinated by operators from the Joint Special Operations Command.

Notes

  • Bojinka jetliners bomb plot navigator New York Times summary of its articles about Bojinka.