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| Bin Laden's brother-in-law speaks |
| Friday, November 26, 2004 |
Bin Laden's brother-in-law speaks
Former confidant details life with terrorist leader
From Nic Robertson and Henry Schuster
CNN
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- Osama bin Laden's
brother-in-law, and former best friend, says he's not
surprised the terrorist leader has been difficult to
capture.
"Who is going to capture him and where?" Jamal Khalifa
said.
Khalifa spoke to CNN in an exclusive interview about
bin Laden and their past, which he said took the two
men from university to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan
before they parted company.
"For 10 years, the Russians did not capture even one
leader of the Afghan mujahedeen with the full forces
everywhere. So I think it is a little bit difficult,"
he said.
These days, Khalifa runs a fish restaurant just
outside the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah.
"Ten years we are together," said Khalifa. "When we
were in the university and after that. Always we are
together. We live in one house."
Bin Laden and Khalifa met at Jeddah's King Abdulaziz
University in the late 1970s and became close friends,
nearly inseparable, Khalifa said.
They also shared a teacher, Abdullah Azzam, a
Palestinian cleric who later joined bin Laden as
founders of al Qaeda. Azzam's teachings helped
influence bin Laden and Khalifa to go to Afghanistan
and join the jihad against the Soviet forces that had
invaded that country in 1979.
It was a sign of bin Laden's respect and affection for
Khalifa that he arranged for Khalifa to marry his
sister. But Khalifa thought a degree of caution might
be in order, since they were headed into a war zone.
"He is the one who suggested ... I marry his sister,"
Khalifa said. "I told him, 'Osama, we are going to die
and you are talking about marriage. So let's go first
and if I come alive, we will do it.' So, I came
alive."
Khalifa said he spent most of his time in Pakistan,
setting up an Islamic relief charity, building schools
and mosques for refugees displaced by the war in
neighboring Afghanistan.
At the same time, bin Laden was becoming a leader of
Arabs who came to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was
able to use some of his family fortune and contacts to
raise money for the jihad, and he led men into combat.
Khalifa said that he was troubled at the time that bin
Laden was creating his own fighting force from the
men, who were known as the Afghan Arabs. "I saw him
starting to group the Arabs in one place and start to
let them go and fight by themselves."
Khalifa said he didn't realize that he was witnessing
the beginnings of al Qaeda. But he said that what he
saw he didn't like. He had a visit from three men,
including Abu Ubaidah and Abu Hafs, who later became
al Qaeda's first two military commanders.
They asked him a series of questions. Only later, he
said, did he understand he was being screened about
becoming a member of al Qaeda. This was in the late
1980s.
'Osama, you are doing something wrong'
"I am the first one who stood up in front of Osama and
told him, 'Osama, you are doing something wrong. You
are going to the wrong direction,'" said Khalifa, who
said he did not approve of the worldwide jihad that
bin Laden and his advisers were planning.
Sheik Azzam, their mentor, was murdered under
still-mysterious circumstances shortly afterward, and
bin Laden became the uncontested leader of al Qaeda.
"He is a wealthy man, he has very good connections,
and many people really love Osama," Khalifa said.
He said he parted company with bin Laden in the late
1980s, but they remained in touch. He last saw him in
early 1992 during a family visit to Sudan.
The bin Laden Khalifa saw on video most recently aired
on Arabic-language news channels looks like a man who
has aged a great deal, he said.
On that tape, bin Laden once again took responsibility
for the attacks of September 11, 2001. Khalifa
believes that to be the case, but he says his
brother-in-law was the leader of the attacks, but not
the organizer.
"He cannot organize anything. I am the one who is
leading. I am the one who is leading him in the
prayer. I am the one who is leading if we go for
outing, for picnic, for riding horses," Khalifa said
with a laugh.
Khalifa has become more outspoken in his criticism of
bin Laden. Last year, after a wave of terrorist
attacks in Saudi Arabia, he published an open letter
to bin Laden in a Saudi paper, asking him to renounce
the terrorism being committed in his name.
"Please come out, tell those people to stop," Khalifa
wrote in the letter. "You are the one who can tell
that, and you are the one who can stop it."
He never got a response from the man who was once his
best friend. But there have been more attacks.
Khalifa has been the target of an extraordinary amount
of scrutiny because of his background.
In the Philippines, where he went from Afghanistan,
officials charged in a 1994 report that he was using
businesses and prominent Islamic charities as fronts
to funnel money to terrorists. Much of the
investigation was done after Khalifa had left the
country.
No charges were filed, Col. Boogie Mendoza of the
Philippine National Police, said, because at the time
the Philippines had no anti-terrorism laws. Currently,
Khalifa does not face any charges in the Philippines.
In fact, Mendoza said, if Khalifa returned to Manila,
he would likely be put under surveillance but not be
arrested.
Khalifa next traveled to San Francisco, California. He
was arrested there by the U.S. government after it
learned he was wanted in Jordan, where he had been
convicted in absentia on a charge of plotting to
overthrow the government. After being deported to
Jordan, he was retried and acquitted.
Although Khalifa is named as a defendant in a
multibillion-dollar lawsuit brought by the families of
9/11 victims, he contends there is no evidence to link
him to the attacks.
On September 11, Khalifa was on a business trip in
Southeast Asia. After he returned to Saudi Arabia, he
was jailed for several months. He said he still
doesn't know why he was arrested.
"They came and said, 'You are clear and you can go
now.' That's it. So I don't know what is going on," he
said.
Nawaf Obaid, a national security consultant for the
Saudi government, said officials there now believe
Khalifa "does not pose any security threat to any
government and that he has broken all ties that have
linked him to his charitable groups when he was
operating out of the Philippines."
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posted by Jay Are @ 3:24:00 PM   |
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