Murdered bin Laden relative to be flown to Saudi Arabia

ANTANANARIVO, Feb 2 (Reuters) A relative of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden shot dead by intruders in Madagascar will be flown to his family home in Saudi Arabia when an autopsy is complete, a top police official said.

Jamal Khalifa -- a brother-in-law of bin Laden -- was killed by gunmen armed with pistols and hunting rifles on Wednesday at his house in southwest Madagascar.

''Jamal Khalifa's body was made the object of an autopsy.

This is an obligatory formality from the Malagasy side,'' General Claude Ramananarivo, commander of Madagascar's gendarmerie, told Reuters by telephone yesterday.

The body would later be flown to Medina in Saudi Arabia, he said. A police official from the Sakaraha district where Khalifa was killed said he had been shot in his stomach and thigh.

''He also received a knife cut to the head and an axe blow to the chin. The Saudi was not able to retaliate since he did not have any weapons to defend himself with,'' Adjutant Razafindranaivo told Reuters.

A second Saudi man, Quaid Abduljalil, was shot in the attack and evacuated by air to Tulear, he said, referring to the regional capital about 650 km southwest of the national capital Antananarivo.

Saudi media said yesterday Khalifa was a close friend of bin Laden's at university in the Red Sea city of Jeddah who went with bin Laden to Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Reports said Khalifa last saw bin Laden in Sudan in 1992, and that after that was suspected at various times by US, Saudi and Jordanian authorities of involvement in militant activities but nothing was ever proved against him.

COMPUTER STOLEN The Saudi foreign minister issued a statement expressing sorrow and concern over the of death of Khalifa, who came from a prominent Medina family.

On Wednesday, Dubai-based television station Al Arabiya, said Khalifa, who traded precious stones, had been staying at a mine he owns on the world's fourth largest island, located off the south-east coast of Africa.

Talking to the station, the dead victim's brother Malek Khalifa said the killers apparently wanted to rob his brother, saying 20 to 30 gunmen broke into his brother's bedroom and shot him dead ''in cold blood''.

Razafindranaivo said about 10 men had been involved, while a police official said a computer and briefcase had been stolen.

Malek denied his brother was involved in political activity, and said that apart from family ties, Jamal had no links to bin Laden, a Saudi national who was stripped of his citizenship long before the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The killing took place days after the Philippine Daily Inquirer published what it said was the last interview given by the leader of the Abu Sayyaf group before his death. Abu Sayyaf is the Philipppines' deadliest Islamic militant group.

It quoted Khaddafy Janjalani as saying his group had received funds from two men close to bin Laden, identifying one of them as Jamal Khalifa. CNN later cited an email from Khalifa denying any links with Abu Sayyaf.

Reuters SBA VP0500