Mohammed Jamal Khalifa
| Mohammed Jamal Khalifa | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
February 1, 1957 Jeddah, Saudi Arabia |
| Died | January 31, 2007 (aged 49) Madagascar |
Mohammed Jamal Khalifa (Arabic: محمد جمال خليفه) (1 February 1957 – 31 January 2007) was a Saudi Arabian businessman from Jeddah who married one of Osama bin Laden's sisters. He has been accused of funding terror plots and groups in the Philippines in the 1990s while head of the International Islamic Relief Organization branch there. He was murdered in Madagascar in 2007.
Khalifa is said to have trained with Osama Bin Laden in the mujahideen camps in Afghanistan during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Khalifa came to the Philippines in 1987 or 1988. He was the first head of the International Islamic Relief Organization’s Philippine branch, and also the IIRO’s regional director for all of Southeast Asia. Khalifa had 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.
According to Zachary Abuza writing in 2003, Khalifa established several charities and Islamic organizations in the Philippines ostensibly for charity and religious world but which channeled money to extremist groups. According to Newsweek, Filipino officials suspect Khalifa may have raised as much as several hundred thousand dollars during his eight years in the Philippines, but most of the money (as much as 70 percent, according to Wahab Akbar, governor of the Basilan region where the Abu Sayyaf is based) was spent funding Islamic extremists like Abu Sayyaf. 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 with "the funds they had sent him", when in fact Khalifa had set up only one institution for orphans.
Khalifa founded the "Benevolence International Corporation" (BIC) in the Philippines in 1988, apparently to recruit people for the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. The BIC claimed to be an import-export company. In 1992, that group folded visible operations while another group known as the Islamic Benevolence Committee renamed itself to Benevolence International Foundation. 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 4000 people in early 1995).
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