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9/11 See other 9/11 Articles Title: Gems, al-Qaida and murder. Mystery over killing of Osama Bin Laden's friend · Saudi man's death was political, say his family · US secret service was monitoring his activities When Muhammad Jamal Khalifa was found dead at a remote gemstone mine in south-eastern Madagascar at the end of January, local police quickly put the murder down to a business deal gone wrong. The Saudi businessman, 49, had had to call in local police to evict a gang who had taken over the mine during the owner's six-year absence. All the evidence pointed towards another of the many killings that dominate the notoriously violent Madagascar gem mining business. Khalifa had been shot twice, stabbed and hacked at with an axe. His laptop, notebooks and money were missing, as were his two mobile phones. A survivor from the attack said a gang of up to 30 men had burst in to the guesthouse at the mine in Soameloka before setting upon their victim. But it soon became apparent to the police that this was no ordinary killing. Khalifa was a man with a past, and at the time of his death he was being monitored by the US secret service. He was married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters, and was once the closest friend of the al-Qaida leader. He had also been sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan for allegedly funding a bombing campaign, had funded Islamic charities in the Philippines and had played a controversial role in the arrest of the gang that attempted to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993. After the September 11 2001 attacks he had been arrested by the Saudi authorities and for several years afterwards had been prevented from travelling abroad. He was a man with many enemies. At first, the Khalifa family accepted the view that his killing was a simple case of violent robbery. His brother, Malek, flew to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and the Saudi government paid for a chartered Boeing-777 to bring back the body, sending its most senior diplomat in east Africa to accompany the flight. But two weeks ago, the family changed its view, saying they now believed it was a "political" killing. "They received no cooperation from the authorities in Madagascar," said a family friend who wishes to remain anonymous. "They don't trust the police there any more." The friend said this week that he had warned Khalifa against travelling abroad. "I spoke to him only days before he was killed and said it was not a good idea. He had too many enemies." He added that when Khalifa arrived at the remote mine he found it was being worked by people he had never met. "He had to call in the police to get them out of there," said the friend. Despite the possibility that this was the motive for his killing, there is plenty of evidence that Khalifa was still of enormous interest to the US authorities, and this week's revelations about Interpol bulletins about him have led to speculation on the internet that his death was carried out, or organised, by the American military. What is known is that only four days before he was killed, Interpol's Washington bureau sent a bulletin about him to the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency concerning an unnamed "project initiated to proactively target terrorism from captured terrorists". These details were revealed this week by http://intelwire.com, an American website that has taken an interest in the case. The Interpol bulletins were obtained under US freedom of information legislation. Additional documentation was withheld. Khalifa had had an uneasy relationship with the US authorities. Arrested in California in 1995, he was found to have terror training manuals and contact books listing telephone numbers for Bin Laden in his luggage. There was speculation at the time that he had been "turned", and that he provided information to the FBI which led to the arrests of Ramzi Yousef and others who had planned to blow up a dozen US aircraft over the Pacific. Yousef was eventually convicted of carrying out the first attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993. Whatever the truth, Khalifa was held for more than six months in America, during which time his death sentence in Jordan for the bombing plot was mysteriously quashed. He was eventually released and sent back to Saudi Arabia. He always maintained that he had fallen out with Bin Laden over the latter's decision to form al-Qaida. He had moved from Afghanistan to the Philippines where, depending on who you believe, he either involved himself in setting up charities to build mosques and schools, or became a major financier for the al-Qaida-aligned Abu Sayyaf terrorist group. Even there Khalifa was mired in controversy. Only days before he was murdered, a leader of one of the Filipino Islamist insurgent groups had named him as one of the group's chief benefactors. In recent years, Khalifa had attempted to keep a low profile. He had begun to give interviews to authors about his involvement with Bin Laden, making it very clear that he no longer shared his former friend's views. He started a fish restaurant outside Jedda with his brother Malek and slowly disappeared from view. But Khalifa was finding it hard to make money in Saudi Arabia. "I cannot travel, I cannot leave, I cannot make any deal with anybody ... my business goes down, almost bankrupt," he told Zubeida Malik of the BBC in 2003. "We are in very big trouble." When the Saudis lifted the travel restrictions against him, he decided for the first time since 2000 to visit the gemstone mine he owned in Madagascar. Back in Madagascar there has been little progress in the murder investigation. The police made an arrest two weeks ago, but no one has yet been charged. Khalifa's death seems destined to be as controversial as his life was. Life of a jihadist Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, 49, first met Osama bin Laden in 1976, while studying at university in Jeddah. In 1985 he travelled to Afghanistan to take part in the jihad against the Soviets, marrying bin Laden's sister the following year. Khalifa said he fell out with bin Laden in 1986. He moved to the Philippines, using charitable funds to build mosques and madrassas. Many intelligence experts believe that he helped finance terror groups such as the Abu Sayyaf Group. In 1995 Khalifa was arrested in California after being sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan. The charges were dropped and he later returned to Saudi Arabia. After 9/11 he was briefly detained by the Saudi authorities.
Poster Comment: Ahem... Did Jewish Diamond Merchants, Israeli Arm Smugglers and Jewish/Russian Mobsters Finance Al Qaeda?
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