Bin Laden Brother-in-Law Detained On Immigration Hold In 1995

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, was designated as an "immigration hold" by the U.S. Justice Department through at least Aug. 31, 1995, even though he had been deported months earlier.

A new document obtained by INTELWIRE sheds light on previously reported mysteries involving Khalifa's 1995 detention by U.S. authorities but raises new questions.

Khalifa was arrested by U.S. officials and deported in 1995 under unusual circumstances (story).

U.S. and Philippines authorities have long alleged Khalifa was a top al Qaeda financier. A Saudi national, Khalifa consistently denied any link to terrorism and was never successfully convicted of a terrorist-related offense.

After his December 1994 arrest, Khalifa was imprisoned in an immigration holding cell at the Santa Rosa County Jail until on or about April 19, 1995, when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred.

U.S. officials were concerned about security risks associated with Khalifa in the wake of the bombing and prior to the identification of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols as suspects, sources said.

On the evening of the Oklahoma attack, Khalifa was moved to a maximum security federal prison in Dublin, Calif., according to a Bureau of Prisoners record obtained by INTELWIRE through the Freedom of Information Act (document).

The U.S. Marshals designated Khalifa for special handling with the notation "use extreme caution."

The BOP record indicated that Khalifa was held in U.S. custody until Aug. 31, 1995.

But INS statements, contemporaneous newspaper reports and witness accounts indicate Khalifa was deported to Jordan in early May, to face trial for his alleged role in a cinema bombing there. Khalifa was acquitted of those charges and was never successfully convicted of any terrorism offense.

Some time in August 1995, Khalifa returned to his native Saudi Arabia.

A new document obtained by INTELWIRE increases the disconnect between Khalifa's actual chain of custody and the Justice Department's paper trail.

A U.S. Marshals prisoner tracking record seems to confirm the Bureau of Prisons record indicating Khalifa remained in U.S. custody through Aug. 31, 1995.

The document, displayed below, claims Khalifa was boarded at the Dublin federal prison for 134 days.

However, a large number of sources dispute these records.

The Marshals record indicates that Khalifa was designated as an "immigration hold" through Aug. 31, 1995. An immigration hold is normally used for suspects held in the U.S. who have been charged with a crime, in order to prevent them from being released in the event they are cleared of non-immigration charges.

However, Khalifa was never publicly charged with any terrorism offense on U.S. soil.

Evidence found in Khalifa's luggage connected him to Wali Khan Amin Shah, who was later convicted of conspiring in Manila with Ramzi Yousef and future 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to bomb U.S. airliners.

Although material taken from Khalifa was deployed to capture at least one member of the Manila cell, and some of his phone records were introduced during the trial, the Saudi was never openly charged in the plot.

The tracking form indicates Khalifa was released from the custody of the Dublin facility "to immigration hold on 8/31/95." It was unclear whether the hold was released at that time or later.

The Marshals document also contains a redacted notation dated Nov. 8, 1995. It describes Khalifa as being in the custody of U.S. Marshals, but the date was unclear.

The U.S. Marshals Service said it possessed no other documents relating to Khalifa.

Labels: INTELWIRE-Exclusive, Jamal-Khalifa

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

New Link Emerges Between Ali Mohamed and September 11

Another link has emerged between the September 11 attacks and Ali Mohamed, al Qaeda's ultimate sleeper spy.

I've already written extensively about Mohamed's connections to the 9/11 network and plotters. There was one particular connection I have long suspected, and it came out in yesterday's transcript release from the military tribunal hearing of Tawfiq bin Attash, the senior al Qaeda coordinator sometimes known as Khallad.

Khallad closely supervised the final stages of the 1998 East African embassy bombings. In the new transcript, he confessed to playing the same role in the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.

What the tribunal not-so-mysteriously failed to address was Khallad's role in 9/11. He was one of the people who attended the infamous planning summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. Among the other attendees were two 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

It's not surprising that the U.S. would want to forget about the Kuala Lumpur summit. The CIA had monitored the meeting -- it has become emblematic of the intelligence failures that allowed 9/11 to happen.

But it's a little worse this time, because the FBI and the CIA had ample reason to watch Khallad, and a good source sitting right in their midst -- Ali Mohammed.

According to the tribunal hearing, a U.S. government intelligence source met Khallad "in Afghanistan (and) stated he also saw the detainee at the al Farouq training camp. The source stated the detainee worked for an important person in al Qaeda and the detainee was a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden."

It's highly likely the "source" in this transcript was Ali Mohamed.

When he wasn't serving in the U.S. Army or as an FBI informant, Mohamed worked as an al Qaeda trainer at the al Farouq camp. And he personally trained bin Laden's bodyguard detachment during the 1990s, when Khallad would have been a member.

So yet another key player in the 9/11 plot traces back to Mohamed, who is being secretly detained as a "cooperating witness" after pleading guilty to several counts connected and adjacent to the embassy bombings.

What's even worse, however, is that Mohamed apparently alerted the U.S. government to Khallad's importance before 9/11. According to the Christian Science Monitor, in an 2004 article titled "Four moments when 9/11 might have been stopped" (emphasis added):

One of the conspirators of the Cole attack told an FBI investigator in January 2001 that his boss was "Khallad." That name, which means silver in Arabic, was familiar to the FBI investigator. He'd heard about Khallad from another source, who had told both the FBI and CIA that Khallad was close to Osama bin Laden. Khallad's name had also come up during the investigation into the 1998 bombings of the two US embassies in Africa.

The FBI investigator obtained a photograph of the boss and forwarded it to the FBI/CIA joint source, who confirmed that it was indeed Khallad bin Attash, a high-level Al Qaeda operative (who had attended the Kuala Lumpur meeting). As some of this information flowed into the CIA's bin Laden unit in the Counterterrorist Center, its officers began to wonder if Khallad wasn't the same person as Khalid al-Midhar, the possible Al Qaeda operative identified at the 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

They sent surveillance photos of that January meeting to the same joint source. The source was not able to identify Mr. Midhar, but said he was 90 percent certain the other person in the photos was Khallad bin Attash.

Was this joint source Ali Mohamed?

UPDATE AND EDIT: No, it wasn't. According to an FBI Inspector General report on the handling of intelligence related to Khallad, the source was overseas in 2000, and an FBI legat was "unable to converse in any of the source's languages." Mohamed spoke English and several other languages, and he was in U.S. custody at the time of the interviews. So this specific source almost certainly was someone else. An object lesson in presuming too much from an incomplete record. However, there's nothing in the transcript which demands that this source be the same as the source who placed Khallad at al Farouq, so Ali Mohamed is certainly still in play for this equation.

END UPDATE/EDIT

While it's impossible to know exactly how much Mohamed told his interrogators over the years, there are already several documented examples (detailed in my earlier article) where Mohamed provided valuable information to U.S. intelligence which was not effectively exploited.

The story of Khallad is beginning to look like one more example of how Mohamed's deep links to the 9/11 network were not effectively exploited to prevent the attack. At minimum, the transcript provides one more link in the already substantial chain of connections between Mohamed and the most devastating terrorist attack in history.

Read the document

Labels: Weblog

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Khalifa Murder Investigation Marked By Confusion, Unanswered Questions

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

Authorities in Madagascar are investigating at least three Arab suspects in the murder of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, according to published reports.

U.S. and Philippines authorities have long alleged Khalifa was a top al Qaeda financier. A Saudi national, Khalifa consistently denied any link to terrorism and was never successfully convicted of a terrorist-related offense. He was killed Jan. 30 in Madagascar.

Two French-language newspapers in Madagascar, Midi Madagasikara and L'Express de Madagascar, have been closely following the murder investigation. Two additional articles appeared in an online journal, the Madagascar Tribune.

INTELWIRE could confirm few details from the reports, which conflict with each other and with information from other sources. But the articles, published in February and March, clearly reveal an investigation in flux and fraught with unresolved questions.

Khalifa was in Madagascar attending to business matters at a sapphire mine he owned there. According to reports, Khalifa was attacked by a group of 20 to 30 men. He was shot twice, apparently once in the chest and once in the back, reports said. He was also attacked with an axe, one report said.

A locally infamous bandit named "Dr. Olivier" was described as the leader of a 30-person gang of "dahalo," or bandits, that attacked Khalifa in Sakaraha, Madagascar, at the end of January. Olivier was reportedly shot in the back and killed while trying to flee from police in a dawn raid on Feb. 1.

When police searched Olivier's home, they found a newly issued passport and determined that many of his papers had been removed, reports said.

Initially, one report said, a member of Olivier's gang confessed to the crime and implicated the ringleader. However, the gang member described an attack by only six people, including Olivier. Other reports consistently indicated 20 to 30 assailants.

Few details from the newspaper reports could be confirmed by INTELWIRE. The reports themselves contain conflicting information. They also did not match up with at least one eyewitness account, according to a source close to the situation. That witness described the attackers as wearing military-style uniforms, the source said.

Other conflicts among the stories include the number of suspects identified by police, which ranged from three to 10, depending on which day and which newspaper was reporting. Three suspects were reportedly arrested within days of the murder.

As of March 13, the latest report, six people were said to have been arrested, in addition to the killing of Olivier.

At the time of the shooting, police reportedly found a safe in Olivier's possession. A laptop computer, two mobile phones and a suitcase or briefcase had been stolen during the attack on Khalifa, reports said. The reports did not indicate if any of the stolen items were in the safe.

"I think that it was pure and simple criminal act," said Albert Rakondravao, Director of the Criminal Investigation Department, told Midi Madagasikara in early February.

But around the same time, Khalifa's brother Malek began accusing local authorities of covering up a "a premeditated crime for political reasons" while still denying that Jamal Khalifa was involved with al Qaeda, according to a report in the Al Hayat newspaper.

"After I saw... the maneuvers by officials (in Madagascar)... I became convinced that the government of Madagascar sold Jamal's fate to international intelligence services," he told Al Hayat.

As the Madagascar newspapers revealed, the official investigation was indeed becoming dense and confused; the initial claims of a simple robbery soon came into question as the number of suspects expanded.

INVESTIGATION BECOMES MURKY

The investigation ground to a halt by Feb. 8 -- because three of the four suspects then identified by police were Arabs, reports said. The local police didn't speak Arabic, anonymous sources told Midi Madagasikara, and the investigation was essentially suspended while authorities sought a translator. One of the suspects was an interpreter, the report said, but investigators didn't trust him to accurately translate the interrogations.

A special task force was put in charge of the investigation, reports said, and police clamped down on the flow of information.

Toward the end of February, an additional mystery emerged. According to Midi Madagasikara, eyewitnesses identified a female suspect who the papers said was with Khalifa on the night of his assassination. One report said the woman had been shot in the foot during the attack and was initially taken into custody. Lacking any immediate evidence implicating her in the attack, she was released.

Later, investigators concluded from footprints at the scene that the woman had guided the assassins to Khalifa's room. It was unclear whether the early report that the woman had been wounded was true, or whether this account was consistent with the previous account. At one point, reports said, the woman was suspected of casing the location, and possibly providing weapons and ammunition used in the attack.

By Feb. 22, reports said, the woman had had vanished and was being sought by police. According to reports, the woman was an associate of another man, named Paul Fils, who had provided a Peugeot 405 used by Khalifa during the trip, and who was now also a suspect.

MAKING ARRANGEMENTS

Khalifa's body was flown back to Saudi Arabia in early February on a Boeing 777 rented by the family, reports said. Nineteen people were on board the flight, including an ambassador from Saudi Arabia, reports said.

One report described a delegation that had been personally dispatched by Saudi King Abdullah. Passengers on the flight were met by government officials who conveyed regrets. The car that conveyed his body to the airport received a police escort.

Khalifa was licensed to operate the mine in 2000, reports said. The papers reported that the Muslim community in Madagascar spoke out to say that Khalifa had no connections to terrorism. Khalifa employed many in the region and the mining operation was valuable, reports said.

The CIA investigated Khalifa in relation to the attacks of September 11, according to the Madagascar reports, and CIA representatives went to Madagascar in 2001 to investigate the Saudi. A worker at the mine named Amin was also questioned by the CIA, according to reports. The CIA was persuaded Khalifa was innocent, or at least that no charges could be brought, and dropped the case, the newspapers said.

Another Madagascar newspaper, the Journal of the Island, reportedly took a much harsher view, arguing that Khalifa was a terrorist who had been treated with "astonishing leniency" by the CIA and FBI, claiming those agencies withheld evidence against the Saudi.

The Journal report, which quoted in other sources but not reviewed by INTELWIRE, appears to simply reiterate charges, long circulated in the West, that Khalifa founded businesses and charities in the Philippines which were then used to financing terrorist activities and the activities of the Abu Sayyaf Group in that country.

Previously on INTELWIRE:

US, Interpol Tracked Khalifa Before Killing

INTELWIRE Exclusive Documents

Khalifa's Life-And-Death Secrets

Dossier: Khalifa Arrest and Deportation

This article was compiled from the following reports:

http://www.midi-madagasikara.mg/textes/po070206.htm

http://www.midi-madagasikara.mg/textes/cu070208.htm#cul1

http://www.midi-madagasikara.mg/textes/cu070210.htm

http://www.midi-madagasikara.mg/textes/cu070313.htm

http://www.lexpressmada.com/index.php?p=display&id=4875

http://www.lexpressmada.com/index.php?p=display&id=4906

http://www.lexpressmada.com/index.php?p=display&id=5424

http://www.lexpressmada.com/index.php?p=display&id=5586

http://www.lexpressmada.com/index.php?p=display&id=5948

http://www.madagascar-tribune.com/index.php?JOURNAL=1125&ART=21916

http://www.madagascar-tribune.com/index.php?JOURNAL=1139&ART=22190

http://www.madagascar-tribune.com/index.php?JOURNAL=1146&ART=22343

Labels: INTELWIRE-Exclusive, Jamal-Khalifa

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CIA Provided Imagery, Searched Databases For OKC Bombing Probe

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

The CIA provided imagery, translators and searched a database of Islamic extremists during the first week after the Oklahoma City bombing.

An unclassified summary of CIA activities was provided to INTELWIRE in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The information provided is intriguing, but mostly lacking in salient detail. INTELWIRE has filed an appeal seeking additional documents in support of the summary.

The CIA provided imagery of the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building for use by the FBI in evaluating the bomb blast. The imagery included both before and after images. It was not clear from the document when -- or why -- the "before" pictures were taken. At the time, the CIA was heavily restricted in its domestic surveillance activities.

The CIA made translators available for the FBI. It was not indicated whether those translators were employed.

The agency's Counterterrorist Center followed up on "preliminary leads from CIA Field Stations with name traces and file reviews as appropriate." The document did not disclose the nature or number of those leads.

The CTC also "searched its data archives for members of any Islamic extremist or terrorist groups known to have spent time in Oklahoma City."

The document did not characterize the results of that search, but it is likely that several names appeared. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who led the World Trade Center bombing conspiracy, was known to have visited Oklahoma City. Another visitor was Mahmud Abouhalima, one of the WTC conspirators.

Interestingly, another name that might have popped up was Wadih El-Hage, an American citizen who served as Osama bin Laden's personal secretary. El-Hage met Abouhalima in OKC in 1989, during an Islamic conference. Although El-Hage had come to the attention of investigators no later than 1993, he was not arrested until after the 1998 East African Embassy bombings.

The agency also provided the FBI with forensic information on the truck bomb that destroyed the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983.

In response to the attack, the CIA set up an "agency-wide task force to focus foreign intelligence resources on the Oklahoma City case," but the task force had been "disestablished" by April 27, just eight days after the bombing, "in light of the domestic background of the apparent perpetrators."

The document makes no mention of the overseas travel of OKC conspirator Terry Nichols, who spent a significant amount of time in the Philippines during the same period Ramzi Yousef was actively plotting terrorist attacks in that country.

View the Full Document

Labels: INTELWIRE-Exclusive, Secrets-Scandals

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From 'Over There,' To 'Over Here'

The latest chemical weapons attack in Iraq is emblematic of one big problem caused by the Bush Administration's strategy of "fighting them over there, instead of over here." Prior to Iraq, al Qaeda had never successfully carried out a significant attack using chemical weapons, despite years of dabbling with the components in Afghanistan.

By making Iraq into a "hot zone" where terrorists can test innovative weapons in real-life situations -- in this case, chlorine gas as a chemical toxin, a tactic al Qaeda in Iraq has been refining for months. The last attack sent at least 350 Iraqis to the hospital. Once proven, these tested weapons and tactics can be used in attacks on civilian targets elsewhere.

Labels: Weblog

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Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Admits 9/11, WTC 1993, Plot To Kill Clinton

Terrorist compares self, Osama bin Laden to American Revolutionary War hero George Washington

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

Comparing himself to George Washington, al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confessed his role in the September 11 attacks.

He also said he was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, according to a transcript of his military tribunal hearing at Guantanamo Bay. It is the first time such a claim has been openly advanced.

Full transcript (PDF)

Mohammed was also charged with being the author of the 1995 Bojinka plot, a thwarted plan to bomb a dozen U.S.-bound airliners during a 48 hour period. Both the World Trade Center bombing and Bojinka also involved Mohammed's nephew Ramzi Yousef.

In his statement before the tribunal (partly by Mohammed himself and partly read by his appointed representative), Mohammed disputed several points among the charges, denying charges that he claimed to be head of al Qaeda's military committee and that he had received operation funding from Islamic extremists in Kuwait.

He also disputed the spelling of his name in the summary of evidence against him.

"Ninety percent of what is written is wrong," Mohammed said to the court.

However, Mohammed was frank about his status regarding the United States.

"I will not regret when I say I'm enemy combatant," he said.

Mohammed confessed that he had sworn bayat (an oath of loyalty) to Osama bin Laden, and said he was a member of the "al Qaeda council."

He also said he was media operations director for al Qaeda's As-Sahab production company, answering to Ayman Al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second-in-command.

Mohammed confessed to being "operational director" for September 11, underneath military commander Abu Hafs al Masri. He said he trained and housed the hijackers in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

"I was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center operation," Mohammed said, the first documented claim linking him to that attack.

He confessed to a laundry list of other plots. Mohammed stated that preior to 1994 or 1995, his plots were not linked to al Qaeda. The dividing line was not clear from Mohammed's statement, presumably due to his command of English.

"Before I remember al Qaeda which is related to Bojinka Operation, I went to destination involve to us in 94, 95," he said.

Among the plots he claimed were the Bali nightclub bombings and the shoe bombing attempted by Richard Reid. He said he had financed efforts to assassinate several former U.S. presidents.

Among those was a 1994 to 1995 plot to assassinate former President Bill Clinton in the Philippines. He said he shared responsibility for a contemporaneous plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II in Manila, but said he was not primarily responsible for that plan.

Mohammed also appeared to claim responsibility for the 1993 "Day of Terror" plot, a thwarted attack for which blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted. He confessed to managing plots to attack the United States with anthrax and dirty bombs.

The long list of attacks to which Mohammed confessed complicity may be exaggerated. However, he was already suspected in many of the plots. One plot -- the third one listed, directly after 9/11 and the World Trade Center bombing -- was redacted.

UPDATE: The Pentagon later released a revised transcript revealing that Mohammed confessed to the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. Mohammed said the murder was not connected to al Qaeda. END UPDATE

Mohammed refused to be sworn in before the tribunal. Through a translator, he said "Take an oath is part of your tribunal and I'll not accept it."

He also spoke candidly about his role.

"I'm not making myself (a) hero when I said I was responsible for this or that. But you are military men. You know very well there (is) language for any war," he said.

"For sure, I'm American enemies," he said later. "When we made any war against America, we are jackals fighting in the nights."

He compared himself and his fellow jihadists to George Washington, at one point, saying bin Laden was doing "the same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence. ... If now we were living in the Revolutionary War, and George Washington, he being arrested through Britain, for sure they would consider him enemy combatant."

Citing a "funny story," Mohammed said that agents of Arab governments who had been sent to assassinate bin Laden had been arrested and imprisoned as enemy combatants.

"When they say we are enemy combatant, that right," he said. "We are. But I'm asking you again to be fair with many detainees which are not enemy combatant."

Labels: INTELWIRE-Exclusive

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

More About The Murder of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa

The Guardian has a new story on the death of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, which builds from the documents first uncovered by INTELWIRE last month. Not the end of this story, be assured...

Labels: Weblog

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink