DUBAI, 1 February 2007 — A brother-in-law of Osama Bin Laden has been killed in Madagascar in what appeared to be a burglary, the victim’s brother said yesterday. Jamal Khalifa, who was married to a sister of the Al-Qaeda leader, was killed when gunmen broke into his house in a Madagascan village on Tuesday, his brother Malek Khalifa said in a phone interview from his home in Jeddah.
Malek, who was distraught when recounting his brother’s death, said 25-30 armed men broke into Jamal’s house “while he was sleeping,” and killed him. “They stole everything — his computer, all of his things,” he said. He said his main concern was “to collect my brother’s body.”
He said Jamal was in Madagascar on business, and his wife and family were in Saudi Arabia. Malek was quoted by the Al-Arabiya satellite TV channel as saying that Jamal mined and traded precious stones in Madagascar. The Philippine government sought Jamal for allegedly financing the Abu Sayyaf group through a charity organization in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
But Jamal denied this, most recently in a letter that he published in the Philippine newspaper The Philippine Daily Inquirer on Saturday in which he said: “I have never given any money to any person or group, and certainly not to the Abu Sayyaf.”
