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Bin Laden relative denies militant link

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(CNN) -- The brother-in-law and former best friend of Osama bin Laden has denied allegations that he funded an Islamic militant group blamed for a series of deadly attacks in the Philippines.

Jamal Khalifa told CNN that claims he funded the Abu Sayyaf group in return for volunteers to fight in Afghanistan were "completely false."

"I have never given any money to any group or persons that include the Abu Sayyaf," Khalifa wrote in an e-mail.

Khalifa's connection with Abu Sayyaf was alleged in an interview with the group's late leader Khaddafy Janjalani published posthumously last week in the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper.

Janjalani was killed in a clash with Philippine troops in September on the Abu Sayyaf island stronghold of Jolo, the military confirmed this month.

In the interview conducted in February 2006, Janjalani denied having links with al Qaeda but admitted Abu Sayyaf had received funds of 6 million Philippine pesos ($122,000) from Khalifa and Ramzi Yousuf, currently serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"They needed at the time volunteers for Afghanistan while we needed money to buy arms, ammunition and other necessities to fight the oppressive government. We reciprocated their assistance by providing them with volunteers," Janjalani was quoted as saying.

But Khalifa disputed the timing of the alleged funding -- suggesting that Abu Sayyaf had only come to prominence in 1989, the same year that the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and three years after he had left the country.

"It is common knowledge that the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, the same year that Abu Sayyaf came to the news in the Philippines. It means that the Jihad was already over in Afghanistan," he wrote.

"The war in Afghanistan became a civil war, between the Afghans. And Osama bin Laden himself was not there and left Afghanistan in 1989... I left Afghanistan in 1986 after my disagreement with him and we became apart from each other... So what volunteers was he talking about?"

In an interview with CNN in 2004, Khalifa said he had parted company with bin Laden in the late 1980s in disagreement with the worldwide jihad being planned by the future leader of al Qaeda and his advisers.

Khalifa also denied links with Ramzi Yousuf, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1997 for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.

"With regards to Mr. Ramzi Yousef, it has already been proven that I have no relationship with him, and that was in the court in United States and Jordan, not just merely by talking in the media," wrote Khalifa.

Khalifa, currently living in Saudi Arabia, was a close friend of bin Laden from their days as students together in Jeddah in the 1970s through their involvement in the jihad opposing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

He claims he spent most of his time in Pakistan, setting up an Islamic relief charity, building schools and mosques for refugees displaced by the Afghan war.

The pair remained in touch after Khalifa left Afghanistan. He last saw bin Laden on a family visit to Sudan in 1992.

CNN's Nic Robertson contributed to this report.

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