Osama bin Laden

Dubai, Jan. 31 (AP): A brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, who is wanted in the Philippines for alleged terror financing, has been killed in Madagascar in what appeared to be a burglary, the victim’s brother said today.

Jamal Khalifa, who was married to a sister of the al-Qaida leader, was killed when gunmen broke into his house in a Madagascan village yesterday, his brother Malek Khalifa said from his home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

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.

Malek said he did not have more details because his brother was a Saudi citizen and Saudi Arabia did not have an embassy on the East African island.

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, an Islamic militant group, through a charity organisation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

But Jamal denied this, most recently in a letter that he published in the Philippine newspaper The 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.”

The US named Jamal as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.