Top Al Qaeda Financier Dead, Denied Links to Osama to His Dying Day

By Zachary Abuza

Mohammad Jamal Khalifah, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden was killed during a robbery during a business trip to Madagascar, where he had invested in gem mines. Khalifah was a key financier of several Southeast Asian militant groups, particularly those in the Philippines.

He has always denied involvement in supporting terrorist and insurgent groups. For example in an emailed statement to CNN last weekend he wrote: "I have never given any money to any group or persons that include the Abu Sayyaf." "It is common knowledge that the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, the same year that Abu Sayyaf came to the news in the Philippines. It means that the Jihad was already over in Afghanistan... The war in Afghanistan became a civil war, between the Afghans. And Osama bin Laden himself was not there and left Afghanistan in 1989... I left Afghanistan in 1986 after my disagreement with him and we became apart from each other... So what volunteers was he [Khadaffy Janjalani] talking about?"

Khalifah got a total whitewash in Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Towers, where he disavowed any relationship with Osama. Wright should have done his homework on Khalifah. My file on Khalifah is thick, but here is some of the evidence against him:

• When Khalifah was arrested in the United States, on 16 December 1994, he was arrested with Mohammad Loay Bayazid, a confidante of Osama bin Laden and believed to be one of the founders of Al Qaeda. At the time he was the director of the Benevolence International Foundation, an international charity with an office in Chicago, which was shut down by US government officials in December 2001 for financing terrorism. BIF was very active in Bosnia in the 1990s and became an important conduit for Al Qaeda as well as Chechnyan militants. Bayazid was detained with Khalifah, though released. He subsequently fled the country. In 1993-94 he was charged with procuring fissile material for Al Qaeda.
• Khalifah was arrested in the US with documents about a militant training camp he had established for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. He was in the US to fund raise for the group. One document detailed the “curriculum” that included coursework on assassinations, bomb-making, weapons, and military training. It emphasized the importance of “jihad” work, and Islamic movements and organizations. It focused the class on assassinations, “full military training, and IED construction.
• Khalifah asserts his innocence and claims that he was acquitted in US courts. He was not acquitted in US courts. He never even left the immigration courts. He was deported to Jordan where he had been sentenced in absentia for supporting terrorism. The US didn’t really have much on the guy at the time. He had broken few US laws in his two weeks in the country. Jordan had more standing.
• Khalifah established the branch offices in the Philippines of the Muslim World League and the sister agency, International Islamic Relief Organization. While the charities did some important social work, the IIRO’s literature made clear that the primary aims of the group was memorization of the Koran, hardly a charitable office. One Abu Sayyaf defector said that “Only 10 to 30 percent of the foreign funding goes to the legitimate relief and livelihood projects and the rest go to terrorist operations.”
• Khalifah was able to divert funds to the MILF and Abu Sayyaf by hiring members of these groups, their close family members or supporters to positions in the IIRO.
o In Tawi Tawi, the director of the IIRO branch office was Abdul Asmad, the Abu Sayyaf’s intelligence chief, before being killed on 10 June 1994;
o The IIRO Director in Zamboanga was Ustadz Bajunaid Ibrahim, the brother of MILF peace panelist Prof. Moner Bujunaid;
o The Director of IIRO in Cotabato/Maguindanao was Ustadz Omar Pasigan, a cousin of Ebrahim el Haj Murad, the current Chairman of the MILF, and a member of the MILF’s Central Committee;
o The Director of IIRO in Davao Province, Ustadz Abdul Moin Galmac, was a relative of MILF chair for military affairs in Davao.
o The IIRO funded an orphanage in Cotabato run by Dr. Abas Candao, the brother of the MILF advisor Zaccarias Candao. Dr. Candao is currently the director of the MILF’s Bangsamoro Development Agency.
• As soon as Khalifah was unable to return to the Philippines and funding for the ASG dried up, it began their spree of kidnapping.
• Khalifah founded another charity, the International Relations and Information Center, in the Philippines in 1994. The IRIC, in reality, was a complex umbrella organization, with a number of affiliated charities and organizations that to this day are being implicated in supporting terrorism in the Philippines. They include: Islamic Wisdom Worldwide Mission, Islamic Presentation Committee, Islamic World Committee, Islamic Da’wah Council of the Philippines Islamic Da’wah and Guidance International Inc, and International Islamic Efforts Foundation.
• The IRIC was the primary funding mechanism for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi Yousef, and Wali Khan Amin Shah’s attempt to blow up 11 US jetliners in early-1995, in what was known as Oplan Bojinka. Khalifah acknowledged a close friendship with Shah, a close confidante of Bin Laden’s, though denied any knowledge that Shah was part of a terrorist cell. Shah, who is sill under US detention, has detailed Khalifah’s use of the IRIC to fund the Ramzi Yousef plot.
• As the FBI Special Agent in charge of Khalifah’s case wrote in his affidavit. “In November 1994, there was a pattern of telephone traffic between [Wali] Khan’s apartment and the cellular telephone of Khalifa [sic], whole Yousef was proceeding at about that time with the purchase of chemicals.”
• One of Khalifah’s last acts in the Philippines was the opening of a branch of Muwafaq in Manila in October 1994. Muwafaq, or the “Blessed Relief” charity, was established as a charitable trust in the tax haven of Isle of Man, which later moved to Jersey that was managed by Yassim al-Qadi, who has been identified as a key associate of Osama bin Laden. The foundation was endowed by a group of wealth Saudi businessmen and investors, including, Khalid bin Mahfouz, a former chief of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia and financial advisor to the Saudi royal family, who appeared on Al Qaeda’s “Golden Chain” list of top financiers. In 1999, a Saudi Arabian government audit of the NCB discovered that Mahfouz had transferred roughly $3 million to Al Qaeda. Muwafaq, which had a $20 million endowment, was found to have sent millions of dollars to Al Qaeda in the 1990s before it was shut down.
• On 3 August 2006, the US Treasury department designated the Philippine Branch of the IIRO as a terrorist financier. Long overdue, but testimony of the deep-rooted nature of Khalifah’s networks.

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