Jamal Khalifa
Osamas Best Friend
20
Terrorism experts call him "the Godfather of al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia. Jamal Khalifa stands accused of plotting and financing a range of deadly attacks. But far from being a fugitive from America's war on terror, he lives openly in Saudi Arabia, now running a well-known restaurant. He also heads a number of Islamic charities - three of which Western intelligence agencies suspect are terror fronts. And that's the difficulty facing the US - money for terror networks is flowing not only from rogue states but also, it seems, from oil billionaires in Saudi Arabia - supposedly a close American ally. However, proving that is easier said than done. Matthew Carney reports.
REPORTER: Matthew Carney
Jamal Khalifa has just opened his first restaurant in the ancient port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. But Khalifa is not famous for his seafood. To the West, he's a terrorist mastermind - the man who made al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia and bin Laden's best friend.
JAMAL KHALIFA: We became more than brothers. Even his brothers, they don't mingle with him more than I do. So we were really very close friends to each other. Almost we did not separate the whole day, the whole time we were together.
Outside of Saudi Arabia, Khalifa is a wanted man. He's already been arrested and interrogated three times in three countries. The FBI still believe he's the man that got away. Khalifa does admit to keeping bad company, but he says the evidence against him is all just circumstantial.
JAMAL KHALIFA: I am telling everybody, come and talk. I am not hiding. I'm not escaping. I am not... I am here. I am welcoming everybody to come and talk and say. And if I did anything wrong, I am really putting myself and say OK, come and punish me.
Khalifa is a likely suspect. He became bin Laden's best friend while they were both at university. Their ties were cemented when Khalifa took bin Laden's sister Sheikha as his second wife. The bin Laden he knew then, Khalifa says, was a man to be respected.
JAMAL KHALIFA: Osama was a very normal person, very humble, and a very simple person. Osama also is a very polite, quiet person. He forces you to respect him from his attitudes. He is not a person who's aggressive. He's not a person who is even thinking to hate any person, even by word. He's really selecting his words very carefully when he's talking. He's really a nice guy - a very nice guy.
Khalifa says he's not working with his best friend anymore. He condemns the terrorist attacks of September 11 and says the bin Laden he knew does not match the image of him today.
JAMAL KHALIFA: Osama always actually he is my best friend. He is my ... more than my brothers. I loved him very much up to now. Yes, I am not agree about what he is doing, but still he is a friend. OK? And even if I have... freely I say that many times, I'm saying that if I have any power to stop him, I will do.
But the FBI and CIA don't believe Khalifa's story. It was here in Jeddah, they say, he and bin Laden hatched a plan to globalise al-Qa'ida. Bin Laden and Khalifa fell under the influence of the radical Muslim cleric Abdullah Azam in the early 1980s. Western intelligence sources credit Azam as being one of the founders of al-Qa'ida. He urged Saudi youth to martyr themselves in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
JAMAL KHALIFA: I met Abdullah Azam in Osama's house. So he started to talk to us that we have to go, we have to help, we have to give an effort and this is a duty, it's helping our brothers there. So we decided to go. Then I went...he used to go, I think, ahead of me. But he go and come back like this. I also went in 1985 - January 1, 1985. I was on the plane because I remember they serve us for the New Year, and that was the first time I saw wine in my life.
It was in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s that Khalifa claims he and bin Laden started to move in different directions. Khalifa says his Jihad was more about humanitarian work.
JAMAL KHALIFA: Then Osama actually made the one camp. They call it Al-Masada Camp. Masada means the house of the lions. OK? So the lions were there. So he started to group the Arab volunteers coming to jihad in that camp. The camp became big.
This was the beginning of al-Qa'ida, and it was at this point Khalifa says, he had a falling out with bin Laden, who was now starting his plans to internationalise his jihad.
JAMAL KHALIFA: So I went there then in the last days we started to talk, me and Osama, because nobody can face him. So our arguments became a little bit tough with each other. So we reached to a point when there was no agreement. I was telling him that You had to leave this place, you have to send those people back. You have to dismantle everything here and go, because this is dangerous, nobody like it, nobody agree about it. You are changing the direction of our goal and objectives here, so please But Osama, he did not listen. I was really thinking that if I told him that I will leave you, I will separate from you, I will do some maybe he will come with me. But never. He just said, "OK, this is my way, this is your way, go away." So from that time, 1986 - almost the end of 1986 - at that time, I separated from him and that's it from that time up to now.
ZACHARY ABUZA: Bin Laden did not change himself. He was committed to waging this jihad back in the mid-1980s. And already he was espousing a very virulent anti-Americanism at the time.
Zachary Abuza is an authority on al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia and has just published a book on al-Qa'ida's networks in the region.
ZACHARY ABUZA: I just do not believe that Khalifa could have been caught by surprise by bin Laden's attempt to globalise his jihad and turn al-Qa'ida into an internationalist organisation.
In fact, Western analysts agree that Jamal Khalifa was dispatched to the Philippines to set up al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia. The FBI and the CIA, who declined to be interviewed for this program, believe he established al-Qa'ida's operations by using Islamic charities and legitimate businesses as a cover.
ZACHARY ABUZA: He played such a very important role in establishing the infrastructure for terrorist activities, the charities, the front companies, recruiting people, really establishing a very thorough network.
The FBI say Khalifa started his first big operation in Manila in the early 1990s. He helped organise and fund a terrorist cell of about 20 people. Their plan, known as '48 Hours of Terror', was, until then, al-Qa'ida's most ambitious. They were to assassinate the Pope on his visit to the Philippines in 1995 and simultaneously hijack a dozen US passenger jets, crashing them into the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon, and CIA headquarters. Many see this as a blueprint for September 11. According to the FBI, bomb-making expert Ramzi Yousef, later convicted of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, was brought in for the job. Khalifa denies any involvement in the plan, and says he never met Ramzi Yousef, even though his business cards were found in the apartment where Yousef was preparing the bombs.
JAMAL KHALIFA: What did they find with Ramzi Yousef? My calling card. I am a businessman. I am head of a very big organisation. Plenty of people come and meet me, I give them my card. So now if I give you your card, be careful.
ZACHARY ABUZA: Ramzi Yousef was not in the Philippines to do charitable work. He was there to conduct a major terrorist operation against the United States, and I don't see what business he would have, having simply the business card of the head of a large charity there.
Khalifa says he went to the Philippines to work as an Islamic missionary. He was in charge of the Muslim World League, a legitimate charity. No-one disputes that Khalifa did much good work here in the south of the Philippines, but it's his 10 other businesses and private charities that are at the centre of allegations that he funded terrorists like Ramzi Yousef. Zachary Abuza has strong connections to Western intelligence agencies and says Khalifa's information and research centre was a front.
ZACHARY ABUZA: The international research and information centre, which was directed by his brother-in-law Abu Amir, he used that as the primary funding vehicle for Ramzi Yousef.
REPORTER: And you can be absolutely sure that none of that money was used in any type of terrorist operation?
JAMAL KHALIFA: I am not only sure, I am sure and I am challenging if anybody can just give us one single cent goes to any of those people.
But Khalifa does admit to knowing Wali Khan, the other ringleader in the plot. But once again, he says he can explain the connection.
JAMAL KHALIFA: Wali Khan, he was a student in the high school where I was teaching in Medina, OK? Then this guy, he is not a Saudi, he is actually from Uzbekistan. When the Afghan problem happened, so he decided to go and join the Afghan. So he went there. He was in Afghanistan. And I think he came to the Philippines '90s, I think, '93 or '92. Sometimes like that. I'm not sure. So when he came to the Philippines, whom do you think he will contact? Of course. I am his teacher. And in the same time, even if I am not his teacher, I am the director of Muslim World League. Anybody coming there would contact me.
At about the same time as the '48 Hours of Terror' plot was being thwarted in the Philippines, Khalifa was arrested for visa violations on a visit to America in December 1994. On him they found documents that the FBI released to the Philippines intelligence explaining jihad and the wisdom of assassinating priests, bombing churches, and martyrdom operations. But the documents were not directly related to the terrorist plot.
JAMAL KHALIFA: They go to my offices, search every single papers, questions everybody, trying to get anything. It's a challenge. So they come out with zero. Nothing at all.
After four months in a US jail, the authorities decided to extradite Khalifa to Jordan where he had been convicted in absentia of financing a terrorist cell.
ZACHARY ABUZA: They rendered him to Jordan, and the reason they did so was they did not believe that they had enough evidence where a jury would be as convinced by the evidence linking him to terrorist groups in South-East Asia.
A death sentence was awaiting Khalifa in Jordan. He was convicted of a plot to bring down the government through a bombing campaign and assassinating the Prime Minister. Khalifa denies any knowledge of the plan, but once again just happens to know one of the key planners.
JAMAL KHALIFA: I employed him. He's a Jordanian. And he came to teach in one of my schools in the Philippines. I get him, so he was under, I mean, for three months trial. If he's OK, then we will continue. So in less than three months, we discover that this guy, he is not capable to do the job. So we return him back. This guy, I think, he went there and he grouped a small group then they make a small bomb and put it in the cinema. Even the one they give it to him, he took the bomb and put it under his chair, and he liked the film so he continued watching the film. Then it exploded and cut his legs. So they said when they started to question this guy Where were you before this time? He said, I was in the Philippines working in this place. Who was the director there? He said Mr Khalifa. Who is he? He is like this. He is the in-law of Osama bin Laden. He is a Saudi. Oh, very nice story. Very nice.
Khalifa says he was set up and in Jordan on a retrial, the sentence was overturned. Once more, Khalifa had managed to elude conviction.
Back at his fish restaurant, Khalifa is relaxed. He knows Western intelligence agencies have no solid proof against him. The critical question for those pursuing him is how the money flows through his charities and how much of it, if any, is used for terrorist operations.
ZACHARY ABUZA: He is a very smart man. I think he knew how to cover his tracks and to make sure that most everything he did was overt and above board. Some of his dealings were covert, and he did a very good job in covering his tracks and making sure that there were six degrees of separation between him and the other actors.
But perhaps most damaging for Khalifa is the evidence of his key role in setting up and funding the Abu Sayyaf in 1991. The radical Islamic group, based in the southern Philippines, has become infamous for kidnapping and beheading Western hostages. The US has listed them as a terrorist organisation with links to al-Qa'ida and has deployed its troops in the Philippines to help wipe out the group. A series of former rebels have come forward to say that Abu Sayyaf was Khalifa's creation. Gerry Salapuddin, ex-rebel and now deputy speaker of the Philippines Congress says Khalifa was the money man.
JAMAL KHALIFA: I don't know him exactly, but I'm saying the same thing. So why...my question to them again, why the Philippine government up to now, they did not file case against me?
Wahab Akbar, another ex-rebel and now governor of Basilan says Khalifa set up the Abu Sayyaf.
JAMAL KHALIFA: This guy, he used to...he was a very poor guy, and he used to stay in my house in Manila sometimes. Believe me, just feed him. And as I am saying, those people when they...imagine some person, he is from the street, then he jump to be a governor., and he want to please the government, what he will say?
Khalifa's case points to the difficulty America faces in trying to break up al-Qa'ida's infrastructure. If he is the real terrorist mastermind, the proof lies buried deep with al-Qa'ida's inner circle, which remains largely intact.
ZACHARY ABUZA: I think it's going to be very hard to prosecute, especially people like him, the money men, and perhaps that's why in over 13 months right now, 14 months, so little al-Qa'ida money has actually been confiscated. To my knowledge, only some $113 million in terrorist funding has been seized since September 11. And many of the charities that Khalifa has been affiliated with or established himself are still up and operating. It's very difficult for these governments to shut these down.
As Khalifa awaits the arrival of his customers, there is no hint of the suspected international terrorist. But again, he's preparing for another court case. In an attempt to stop terrorist funding, some of the victims of September 11 are trying to shut down Islamic charities. This includes a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Khalifa and other prominent Saudis. The case has yet to come to court, and Khalifa says the plan will backfire.
JAMAL KHALIFA: And what the Americans and the West are doing now? Again, it's the charity organisation in Saudi Arabia. It is very, very dangerous for them. Look, they are filing a case against those charity organisation and they keep talking here and there. So they want what? They want this organisation to close? They want it not to help anybody? What do they want exactly? If they wanted it to shut down and close, it means that if you have one Osama bin Laden in the world, you will have millions. Because those charity organisations, they are feeding millions of people all over the world. And those people are poor people. They are jobless. Those organisations are giving them food, giving them jobs. When you take the food from their mouth, what do you expect? He will ask a question Who stopped this organisation? They will tell him the Americans. OK, let any American move after that.
Despite years of scrutiny, Khalifa is currently not on the US most-wanted list. The FBI says simply He's still under investigation. His case shows just how difficult it will be for America to win its war on terror.
Osamas Best Friend
20
Terrorism experts call him "the Godfather of al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia. Jamal Khalifa stands accused of plotting and financing a range of deadly attacks. But far from being a fugitive from America's war on terror, he lives openly in Saudi Arabia, now running a well-known restaurant. He also heads a number of Islamic charities - three of which Western intelligence agencies suspect are terror fronts. And that's the difficulty facing the US - money for terror networks is flowing not only from rogue states but also, it seems, from oil billionaires in Saudi Arabia - supposedly a close American ally. However, proving that is easier said than done. Matthew Carney reports.
REPORTER: Matthew Carney
Jamal Khalifa has just opened his first restaurant in the ancient port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. But Khalifa is not famous for his seafood. To the West, he's a terrorist mastermind - the man who made al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia and bin Laden's best friend.
JAMAL KHALIFA: We became more than brothers. Even his brothers, they don't mingle with him more than I do. So we were really very close friends to each other. Almost we did not separate the whole day, the whole time we were together.
Outside of Saudi Arabia, Khalifa is a wanted man. He's already been arrested and interrogated three times in three countries. The FBI still believe he's the man that got away. Khalifa does admit to keeping bad company, but he says the evidence against him is all just circumstantial.
JAMAL KHALIFA: I am telling everybody, come and talk. I am not hiding. I'm not escaping. I am not... I am here. I am welcoming everybody to come and talk and say. And if I did anything wrong, I am really putting myself and say OK, come and punish me.
Khalifa is a likely suspect. He became bin Laden's best friend while they were both at university. Their ties were cemented when Khalifa took bin Laden's sister Sheikha as his second wife. The bin Laden he knew then, Khalifa says, was a man to be respected.
JAMAL KHALIFA: Osama was a very normal person, very humble, and a very simple person. Osama also is a very polite, quiet person. He forces you to respect him from his attitudes. He is not a person who's aggressive. He's not a person who is even thinking to hate any person, even by word. He's really selecting his words very carefully when he's talking. He's really a nice guy - a very nice guy.
Khalifa says he's not working with his best friend anymore. He condemns the terrorist attacks of September 11 and says the bin Laden he knew does not match the image of him today.
JAMAL KHALIFA: Osama always actually he is my best friend. He is my ... more than my brothers. I loved him very much up to now. Yes, I am not agree about what he is doing, but still he is a friend. OK? And even if I have... freely I say that many times, I'm saying that if I have any power to stop him, I will do.
But the FBI and CIA don't believe Khalifa's story. It was here in Jeddah, they say, he and bin Laden hatched a plan to globalise al-Qa'ida. Bin Laden and Khalifa fell under the influence of the radical Muslim cleric Abdullah Azam in the early 1980s. Western intelligence sources credit Azam as being one of the founders of al-Qa'ida. He urged Saudi youth to martyr themselves in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
JAMAL KHALIFA: I met Abdullah Azam in Osama's house. So he started to talk to us that we have to go, we have to help, we have to give an effort and this is a duty, it's helping our brothers there. So we decided to go. Then I went...he used to go, I think, ahead of me. But he go and come back like this. I also went in 1985 - January 1, 1985. I was on the plane because I remember they serve us for the New Year, and that was the first time I saw wine in my life.
It was in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s that Khalifa claims he and bin Laden started to move in different directions. Khalifa says his Jihad was more about humanitarian work.
JAMAL KHALIFA: Then Osama actually made the one camp. They call it Al-Masada Camp. Masada means the house of the lions. OK? So the lions were there. So he started to group the Arab volunteers coming to jihad in that camp. The camp became big.
This was the beginning of al-Qa'ida, and it was at this point Khalifa says, he had a falling out with bin Laden, who was now starting his plans to internationalise his jihad.
JAMAL KHALIFA: So I went there then in the last days we started to talk, me and Osama, because nobody can face him. So our arguments became a little bit tough with each other. So we reached to a point when there was no agreement. I was telling him that You had to leave this place, you have to send those people back. You have to dismantle everything here and go, because this is dangerous, nobody like it, nobody agree about it. You are changing the direction of our goal and objectives here, so please But Osama, he did not listen. I was really thinking that if I told him that I will leave you, I will separate from you, I will do some maybe he will come with me. But never. He just said, "OK, this is my way, this is your way, go away." So from that time, 1986 - almost the end of 1986 - at that time, I separated from him and that's it from that time up to now.
ZACHARY ABUZA: Bin Laden did not change himself. He was committed to waging this jihad back in the mid-1980s. And already he was espousing a very virulent anti-Americanism at the time.
Zachary Abuza is an authority on al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia and has just published a book on al-Qa'ida's networks in the region.
ZACHARY ABUZA: I just do not believe that Khalifa could have been caught by surprise by bin Laden's attempt to globalise his jihad and turn al-Qa'ida into an internationalist organisation.
In fact, Western analysts agree that Jamal Khalifa was dispatched to the Philippines to set up al-Qa'ida in South-East Asia. The FBI and the CIA, who declined to be interviewed for this program, believe he established al-Qa'ida's operations by using Islamic charities and legitimate businesses as a cover.
ZACHARY ABUZA: He played such a very important role in establishing the infrastructure for terrorist activities, the charities, the front companies, recruiting people, really establishing a very thorough network.
The FBI say Khalifa started his first big operation in Manila in the early 1990s. He helped organise and fund a terrorist cell of about 20 people. Their plan, known as '48 Hours of Terror', was, until then, al-Qa'ida's most ambitious. They were to assassinate the Pope on his visit to the Philippines in 1995 and simultaneously hijack a dozen US passenger jets, crashing them into the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon, and CIA headquarters. Many see this as a blueprint for September 11. According to the FBI, bomb-making expert Ramzi Yousef, later convicted of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, was brought in for the job. Khalifa denies any involvement in the plan, and says he never met Ramzi Yousef, even though his business cards were found in the apartment where Yousef was preparing the bombs.
JAMAL KHALIFA: What did they find with Ramzi Yousef? My calling card. I am a businessman. I am head of a very big organisation. Plenty of people come and meet me, I give them my card. So now if I give you your card, be careful.
ZACHARY ABUZA: Ramzi Yousef was not in the Philippines to do charitable work. He was there to conduct a major terrorist operation against the United States, and I don't see what business he would have, having simply the business card of the head of a large charity there.
Khalifa says he went to the Philippines to work as an Islamic missionary. He was in charge of the Muslim World League, a legitimate charity. No-one disputes that Khalifa did much good work here in the south of the Philippines, but it's his 10 other businesses and private charities that are at the centre of allegations that he funded terrorists like Ramzi Yousef. Zachary Abuza has strong connections to Western intelligence agencies and says Khalifa's information and research centre was a front.
ZACHARY ABUZA: The international research and information centre, which was directed by his brother-in-law Abu Amir, he used that as the primary funding vehicle for Ramzi Yousef.
REPORTER: And you can be absolutely sure that none of that money was used in any type of terrorist operation?
JAMAL KHALIFA: I am not only sure, I am sure and I am challenging if anybody can just give us one single cent goes to any of those people.
But Khalifa does admit to knowing Wali Khan, the other ringleader in the plot. But once again, he says he can explain the connection.
JAMAL KHALIFA: Wali Khan, he was a student in the high school where I was teaching in Medina, OK? Then this guy, he is not a Saudi, he is actually from Uzbekistan. When the Afghan problem happened, so he decided to go and join the Afghan. So he went there. He was in Afghanistan. And I think he came to the Philippines '90s, I think, '93 or '92. Sometimes like that. I'm not sure. So when he came to the Philippines, whom do you think he will contact? Of course. I am his teacher. And in the same time, even if I am not his teacher, I am the director of Muslim World League. Anybody coming there would contact me.
At about the same time as the '48 Hours of Terror' plot was being thwarted in the Philippines, Khalifa was arrested for visa violations on a visit to America in December 1994. On him they found documents that the FBI released to the Philippines intelligence explaining jihad and the wisdom of assassinating priests, bombing churches, and martyrdom operations. But the documents were not directly related to the terrorist plot.
JAMAL KHALIFA: They go to my offices, search every single papers, questions everybody, trying to get anything. It's a challenge. So they come out with zero. Nothing at all.
After four months in a US jail, the authorities decided to extradite Khalifa to Jordan where he had been convicted in absentia of financing a terrorist cell.
ZACHARY ABUZA: They rendered him to Jordan, and the reason they did so was they did not believe that they had enough evidence where a jury would be as convinced by the evidence linking him to terrorist groups in South-East Asia.
A death sentence was awaiting Khalifa in Jordan. He was convicted of a plot to bring down the government through a bombing campaign and assassinating the Prime Minister. Khalifa denies any knowledge of the plan, but once again just happens to know one of the key planners.
JAMAL KHALIFA: I employed him. He's a Jordanian. And he came to teach in one of my schools in the Philippines. I get him, so he was under, I mean, for three months trial. If he's OK, then we will continue. So in less than three months, we discover that this guy, he is not capable to do the job. So we return him back. This guy, I think, he went there and he grouped a small group then they make a small bomb and put it in the cinema. Even the one they give it to him, he took the bomb and put it under his chair, and he liked the film so he continued watching the film. Then it exploded and cut his legs. So they said when they started to question this guy Where were you before this time? He said, I was in the Philippines working in this place. Who was the director there? He said Mr Khalifa. Who is he? He is like this. He is the in-law of Osama bin Laden. He is a Saudi. Oh, very nice story. Very nice.
Khalifa says he was set up and in Jordan on a retrial, the sentence was overturned. Once more, Khalifa had managed to elude conviction.
Back at his fish restaurant, Khalifa is relaxed. He knows Western intelligence agencies have no solid proof against him. The critical question for those pursuing him is how the money flows through his charities and how much of it, if any, is used for terrorist operations.
ZACHARY ABUZA: He is a very smart man. I think he knew how to cover his tracks and to make sure that most everything he did was overt and above board. Some of his dealings were covert, and he did a very good job in covering his tracks and making sure that there were six degrees of separation between him and the other actors.
But perhaps most damaging for Khalifa is the evidence of his key role in setting up and funding the Abu Sayyaf in 1991. The radical Islamic group, based in the southern Philippines, has become infamous for kidnapping and beheading Western hostages. The US has listed them as a terrorist organisation with links to al-Qa'ida and has deployed its troops in the Philippines to help wipe out the group. A series of former rebels have come forward to say that Abu Sayyaf was Khalifa's creation. Gerry Salapuddin, ex-rebel and now deputy speaker of the Philippines Congress says Khalifa was the money man.
JAMAL KHALIFA: I don't know him exactly, but I'm saying the same thing. So why...my question to them again, why the Philippine government up to now, they did not file case against me?
Wahab Akbar, another ex-rebel and now governor of Basilan says Khalifa set up the Abu Sayyaf.
JAMAL KHALIFA: This guy, he used to...he was a very poor guy, and he used to stay in my house in Manila sometimes. Believe me, just feed him. And as I am saying, those people when they...imagine some person, he is from the street, then he jump to be a governor., and he want to please the government, what he will say?
Khalifa's case points to the difficulty America faces in trying to break up al-Qa'ida's infrastructure. If he is the real terrorist mastermind, the proof lies buried deep with al-Qa'ida's inner circle, which remains largely intact.
ZACHARY ABUZA: I think it's going to be very hard to prosecute, especially people like him, the money men, and perhaps that's why in over 13 months right now, 14 months, so little al-Qa'ida money has actually been confiscated. To my knowledge, only some $113 million in terrorist funding has been seized since September 11. And many of the charities that Khalifa has been affiliated with or established himself are still up and operating. It's very difficult for these governments to shut these down.
As Khalifa awaits the arrival of his customers, there is no hint of the suspected international terrorist. But again, he's preparing for another court case. In an attempt to stop terrorist funding, some of the victims of September 11 are trying to shut down Islamic charities. This includes a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Khalifa and other prominent Saudis. The case has yet to come to court, and Khalifa says the plan will backfire.
JAMAL KHALIFA: And what the Americans and the West are doing now? Again, it's the charity organisation in Saudi Arabia. It is very, very dangerous for them. Look, they are filing a case against those charity organisation and they keep talking here and there. So they want what? They want this organisation to close? They want it not to help anybody? What do they want exactly? If they wanted it to shut down and close, it means that if you have one Osama bin Laden in the world, you will have millions. Because those charity organisations, they are feeding millions of people all over the world. And those people are poor people. They are jobless. Those organisations are giving them food, giving them jobs. When you take the food from their mouth, what do you expect? He will ask a question Who stopped this organisation? They will tell him the Americans. OK, let any American move after that.
Despite years of scrutiny, Khalifa is currently not on the US most-wanted list. The FBI says simply He's still under investigation. His case shows just how difficult it will be for America to win its war on terror.