Bin Laden’s brod-in-law, wife have left RP for Middle East

The Mindanao-based brother-in-law of international terrorist Osama bin Laden has reportedly fled to the Middle East with his Filipina wife after sensing that Philippine authorities would be looking for him.

Meawnwhile, a ranking Philippine National Police (PNP) official recommended the turn over of captured leaders of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group to American authorities to enhance bilateral cooperation against terrorism.

Mohammad Jamal Khalifa was reported to have been operating a foundation in Mindanao purportedly to help indigenous Muslims, although the intelligence community believed that it was being used as a conduit for aids from Bin Laden to local Muslim rebels, notably the extremist Abu Sayyaf group.

"Khalifa has possibly sprung out his wife to the Middle East after sensing that the government was tracking him down," said Superintendent Angelito Casimiro, intelligence chief of the regional police office for Western Mindanao.

Casimiro said Khalifa has been under surveillance by both the police and the military on suspicion that he has been providing financial and material support to local Muslim rebels, but admitted that the operations have yet to produce positive results.

Casimiro also said it has been confirmed that Khalifa, who married a lass from Cotabato City, frequently visited Mindanao to monitor the operation of his foundation, called International Islamic Research Organization.

For his part, Zamboanga police director Superintendent Mario Yanga belied rumors that Bin Laden, tagged by the US government as the brains behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, had visited Mindanao and married a Filipina from Zamboanga City.

Yanga said Bin Laden could not enter the Philippines because the government has been on alert against him upon advice by the US authorities.

The alert even led to the capture of suspected Bin Laden follower Mohammad Murad who was believed to be on a mission to assassinate visiting Pope John Paul II in Manila in 1995.

Meanwhile, Senior Superintendent Rodolfo Mendoza said apart from the physical turn over of the Abu Sayyaf suspects to US authoriteis, it is also necessary for Philippine intelligence agents to take part in any investigation by US authorities on captured leaders of the Abu Sayyaf which has been reported as maintaining links with Bin Laden.

Mendoza said such cooperation would serve as a "test case" to the international coalition against terrorism being expoused by US President Bush.

Mendoza, a former official of the Philippine Center for Transnational Crime, said terrorism has become a borderless crime.

He pointed out, however, that intelligence operations remained as the most effective defense mechanism against terrorism.

"There is no substitute on the first frontier of defense which is an accurate intelligence network," he said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has asked the Philippines and eight Arab and Islamic nations to hand over suspected terrorists in their custody. – With Christina Mendez