Part 3:

Down the al-Taqwa rabbit hole…

So what’s makes the al-Taqwa network so important? Well, The al-Taqwa network is major component of one of the largest reverse-money-laundering setups funding radical Islam: “Clean” money flows into the al-Taqwa network, sloshes around back and forthworth between banks across world, and then gets distributed back out to the multiple militant Islamist movements, financially feeding the likes of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated militant groups like al-Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Abu Sayaff, to name just a few.

So al-Taqwa is a financial nexus. But it’s also a historic nexus because directing this flow of funds we find a cast of characters that are literally the living embodiment of one of the most powerful and least understood alliances of the 20^th. It’s an alliance forged between the nascent Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamist movements in the 1930’s and their ideological and aspirational brethren found in many far-Rightists movements of that day. And yeah, when we’re talking about far-rightist movements from the 1930’s, we’re talking about Nazis. And not just Nazis. We’re talking about the much larger world of fascist, racially-charged nationalists, and all sorts of other characters that share one thing in common: A loathing of Western Democracy and culture (the US in particular nowadays), and a passionate hatred of Communism. This is the milieu we’re talking about, and, as the story of al-Taqwa and their fellow financiers of terror demonstrates, this alliance between the extremist followers of the crescent and the swastika isn’t just a 20^th century phenomena. It’s still going. In other words, Osama has allies, and they don’t all heil Allah.

Even five years since 9/11 most of this history remains unknown to the public. Understanding the past, a task critical to our future and one of the most neglected topics of our age, is often opaque in the public mind. The story of al-Taqwa, and the people behind it, is even more opaque. Much of it wasn’t known until recent decades. Some critical sources simply aren’t published in English. Fortunately, in our modern age of a free press, much of this story has been told, in bits and pieces, scattered amongst the myriad of books and publications available to us. It’s a story hiding in plain site, and a story that easily remains hidden through its sheer messiness and complexity. But, it is also amongst the most important stories of our time, so let’s get started with a a closer look the al-Taqwa network and the people behind it, with an excellent March 2002 article by money-laundering expert Lucy Komisar:

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Shareholders in the Bank of Terror?

A previously unpublished list reveals that backers of a bank that the U.S. says helped fund al-Qaida include prominent members of the Arab world.

By Lucy Komisar

March 15, 2002 | According to an unpublished list obtained by Salon, the Al Taqwa bank, part of a network of financial companies named by the Bush administration as a major source and distributor of funds for Osama bin Laden's terrorist operations, has shareholders that include prominent Arab figures from numerous countries in the Middle East. Among the shareholders are the grand mufti of the United Arab Emirates and prominent families in the UAE and Kuwait. Two sisters of Osama bin Laden are also on the list, undermining the bin Laden family's claim that it separated itself from his terrorist pursuits after he was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1994.

Ahmed Huber, a Swiss director of the bank who is a radical Islamist and Hitler admirer, acknowledged in 1995 that wealthy Saudi Arabians were large contributors to the Al Taqwa bank. The just-revealed list of shareholders demonstrates further connections between important individuals in moderate Middle Eastern countries and a financial network allegedly vital to bin Laden.

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It’s worth noting that the term “moderate” is often applied to Middle Eastern countries that are allied with the US regardless of how moderate their policies actually are with regards to human rights, religious freedom, or, as we’ll see, financial support radical Islam. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan, for example, may be “moderate” when it comes to selling us oil and supporting US geostrategic interests in that region, but that’s about it.

Continuing…

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The FBI may have known who the shareholders were for as long as four years. There is also evidence that Swiss authorities have since the mid-1990s refused to cooperate with international intelligence inquiries into the bank's activities. Swiss officials have said they were aware of reports that Al Taqwa was connected to terrorist groups, but there was never sufficient evidence to merit a search warrant.

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This is one of those patterns we’re going to see over and over when we look into the post-9/11 terror financing investigations. Authorities around the world have known who these guys were for years. The problem is, as the article stated above, many of these guys are also connected to “important individuals in moderate Middle Eastern countries”. As we’ll see, the term “important individuals” is often an understatement when talking about the folks we’re talking about. “Untouchable individuals” might be more like it.

Continuing…

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The names appear on an unpublished shareholders register of "Bank Al Taqwa" that reflects holdings as of December 1999. Bank Al Taqwa is based in the Bahamas; the Al Taqwa group (which changed its name to Nada Management Organization a year ago, after authorities began an investigation into its dealings) is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland. In November, the U.S. named the Al Taqwa network a funnel for Bin Laden's al-Qaida financial network. Representatives of the bank have denied any involvement in terrorist activities.

The list has been confirmed as authentic by both U.S. officials and Al Taqwa. Michele Davis, spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, was shown the documents on March 13 and acknowledged, "We have the list. We are doing the same as you -- trying to find out who these people are." There are 745 names on the 18-page register.

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While all men are created equal, all shareholders aren’t. And neither are the shareholders equal in terms of influence. Just ask the founders and directors of Dar Al-Mal Al-Islami (DMI), a massive financial consortium and one of the two Saudi-based godfathers of the Islamic financial world that’s flourished since the oil-boom of the 70’s. Set up by Saudi princes and “important individuals” back in 1981, DMI is also a principle shareholder of Al-Taqwa(1). Along with its sister financial conglomerate Dallah al-Baraka, DMI is one of the most important institutions for spreading Wahabbi ideas within the Sunni muslim world. It also has a number of ties to Osama bin Laden and terrorist financing (Lucy Komisar has written quite a bit about this topic. It’s not a popular topic). So while there are a number of small players involved with al-Taqwa, its important to remember that the the big shareholders in al-Taqwa include significant Saudi-backed institutions with terrorist connections.

Continuing…

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Al Taqwa president Youssef Moustafa Nada, one of several top bank officials who was put on the U.S. "supporters of terrorism" list in November, also confirmed the veracity of the list. "It is genuine," he said in a phone interview. "You can ask Mr. Nicati [the Swiss deputy attorney general]. He investigated all these things four months ago. The FBI knows since 1997. I talked to them."

Nada has vehemently denied funding bin Laden.

Included on the list are Yousuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi, the grand mufti of the United Arab Emirates, and five members of his family; Mariam Al-Sheikh A. Bin Aziz Al-Mubarak of a branch of the Kuwaiti royal family; and members of the prominent Khalifeh family of the United Arab Emirates. Sisters Huta and Iman Binladen, who live in Saudi Arabia, and Hassan el-Banna, a leader of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood group, are also listed.

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To avoid confusion, the Hassan el-Banna on the list of al-Taqwa shareholders is not the same Hassan el-Banna (also spelled “al-Banna”) that founded the Muslim Brotherhood back in 1929 and died 20 years later (unless its an honorary listing of some sort).

Youssef Nada, on the other hand, definitely harkens back to the early history of Muslim Brotherhood. Specifically, the WWII-period armed branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In one of the many relationships between Arab nationalists and the Nazis during this period, Youssef Nada joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1940’s while also working for the German Abwehr (military intelligence) under Admiral Canaris. In 1954, Youssef Nada was implicated in the plot to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser, and was forced to flee to German and then Italy, where he resides today in Campione d’Italia (which is actually an Italian enclave within Switzerland)(2).

Continuing…

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Al Taqwa was a so-called "hawala" operation (an informal word-of-mouth system that keeps no records and relies on trust) that facilitated transfers of cash between agents worldwide. The bank also used correspondent accounts -- accounts that banks have in other banks -- to transmit cash to its agents.

In October, Swiss Attorney General Valentine Roschacher said he'd received names from the FBI and they were being checked, but said no evidence of any wrongdoing had been found. He added, "It's difficult for us to get information." Swiss banks are protected by stringent secrecy laws, and the hawala system makes ascertaining the exact nature of Al Taqwa's transactions even more difficult.

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As we’re going to see in Part 10, correspondent accounts can give a shell bank a huge amount of money-moving functionality. So al-Taqwa was, in some respects, a Swiss-based hawala-shell bank hybrid. It could act on a word-of-mouth system, keeps no records, and through its “Bank al-Taqwa” branch in the Bahamas it can wire money all over the world via its correspondent account. Now that is one shady shell bank.

Continuing…

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One American law enforcement official who was shown the list recognized names of members of the militant Palestinian organization Hamas, which is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, among the shareholders. Additional publicly accessible records show that some of the bank's shareholders are connected to organizations Western intelligence officials link to al-Qaida.

Al Taqwa has been viewed with suspicion by Western intelligence sources for years. In the mid-1990s, the Italian anti-terrorist agency DIGOS (Division of General Intelligence and Special Operations), concerned about radical Islamic activity at the Islamic Cultural Institution of Milan, found links to Al Taqwa. In 1995, according to journalists Paolo Fusi and Martin Stoll in the Swiss newsweekly Facts, DIGOS told Swiss federal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, "The Nada group comprises the most important financial structure of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic terrorist organizations." The newsweekly said the agency later reported that Swiss officials appeared loath to look into Nada's operations.

Included in the list of shareholders of Al Taqwa are bank founder and director Ahmed Idriss Nasreddin, an Ethiopian who worked for the Binladen Group (the bin Laden family's construction company) and was honorary consul of Kuwait in Milan, board member of the Islamic Center of Milan and president of the Islamic Community of Ticino.

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As Lucy points out, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin isn’t just a founder and director of al-Taqwa. On top of working for the Bin Laden Group, Nasreddin also set up and runs Akida Bank, another bank suspected of moving terrorist funds and is closely affiliated with al-Taqwa’s operations. Akida bank even shares the same Bahamas address as Bank al-Taqwa. On August 29, 2002 the US and Italy acted in concert to freeze the assets of 25 individuals and entities with alleged ties to al-Qaeda. Of the 25, 14 are entities owned or controlled by Ahmed Idris Nasreddin and Youssef Nada. The US government describes both Bank al-Taqwa and Akida bank as shell companies, and they’re right. Both are cogs in a much larger, complicated, and critical machine in funding the radical Islamist and far-rightist movements across the globe. Creating a financial institution can be as easy as filling out some paper work and a paying the government fee in some parts of the globe and its done all the time, for reasons ranging from fraud and terror and simple tax avoidance (3). And in a sense, “shells” aren’t limited to companies. Nada’s partner, Ahmed Huber, can be seen as a representative of a man who has played a vital role in building the ideological and postwar financial alliance between radical Islam and international fascism: Francois Genoud, the godfather of the Al-Taqwa network that committed suicide during the Swiss bank/Nazi gold revelations of 1996.

Continuing …

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Others are Sante (Abdulwahab) Ciccarello, director of the Islamic Cultural Center in Milan, and Kaldoun Dia Eddine, president of the Committee to Aid Refugees of Bosnia-Herzegovina and secretary of the Islamic Community of Ticino.

In 1996 DIGOS became suspicious that humanitarian help to Bosnia organized by Nasreddin in Milan was being skimmed. The amount the charity sent didn't coincide with what it raised. According to the U.S. investigations into the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Milan center was also a gathering place for recruits to an alQaida training camp in Afghanistan.

According to Facts, a 1996 DIGOS report said Al Taqwa handled financing for a number of Arab and Islamic political and militant groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Egyptian Gama'a al-Islamiya, as well as former Afghan mujahedin in bin Laden's camps. It said the network aided terrorist groups in Kuwait, Yemen, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon and Sudan.

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Just a note that the involvement of Khaldoun Dia Eddine (also spelled “Khaldoun”) in Bosnia goes far his being president of the committee to Aid Reguees of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which we’ll have much more to say on in Part 8.

Continuing…

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The weekly Facts also reported that in 1997 DIGOS asked for Swiss help. Del Ponte (who is now leading the U.N.'s prosecution of former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes) started questioning Al Taqwa officials. Nada's attorney, Pier Felice Barchi, in whose law firm Del Ponte had worked, recalled to Facts how he ended the investigation. Barchi said, "When I learned about the Italian inquiry, I immediately called Del Ponte and said to her, 'Hey, Carlotta, stop this shit.' A few hours later, the nonsense was off the table."

Barchi told Salon his true remark was, "Please, Mrs. Del Ponte, make an inquiry." He said, "After 20 or 30 days, Mrs. Del Ponte said it's not necessary to make an inquiry; there's no evidence against Mr. Nada." He said he hadn't asked Facts for a correction because "I have other things to do." Del Ponte's press spokesman declined to respond to a detailed query.

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Yes, that’s right: Youssef Nada’s Swiss attorney, Pier Felice Barchi, worked in the same law firm as Carla Del Ponte, the Swiss Attorney General at the time. Perhaps that had something to do with Swiss disinterest in investigating Al-Taqwa.

Carla Del Ponte, whose career has included being the chief prosecutor in Slobodan Milosevic’s war-crimes tribunal, is one of many political connected people we’re going to come across when investigating the area of terror financing. The al-Taqwa network does not lack in the influence department.

Finishing off Lucy Komisar’s Salon article …

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Al Taqwa has for years enjoyed protection in Switzerland, where it moves money through correspondent accounts in the politically influential Banca del Gottardo, also in Lugano. Gottardo president Claudio Generali is a local vice president of the ruling Liberal Radical Party and a former finance minister of Ticino. Gottardo has New York correspondent accounts in Citibank and the Bank of New York, which gave Al Taqwa entry into the U.S. Replying to numerous queries about Gottardo activities, spokesman Franco Rogantini sent an e-mail declining to answer queries, then or in the future.

About the writer
Lucy Komisar is a New York journalist who is writing a book about how the offshore bank and corporate secrecy system is used by terrorists, criminals, corrupt officials, fraudsters and others worldwide.

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Banca del Gottardo is an important institution to understand in this network, because unlike the al-Taqwa network, which was a series of shell banks and companies scattered across the world, Banca del Gottardo is a real, major financial institution. Owned by Swiss Life, the oldest and largest insurance company in Switzerland, its president, Claudio Generali (now former president), is the former finance minster of Ticino, the Swiss province where Lugano resides. And with Claudio Generali’s status as a local vice president of the Liberal Radical Party (PLR) (the ethnic-Italian component of the center-right Free Democratic Party of Switzerland), Al-Taqwa’s apparent political protection is understandable.

More on al-Taqwa’s far-right foundations…

Ok, there’s a few more unexpected twists to related to Al-Taqwa’s world of politics and finance. First, let’s turn to Kevin Coogan, an expert on the far-Right and author of Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, one of the most important books for understanding the evolution of the far-right after WWII. Amongst the many fascinating tidbits in his “Report on Islamists, the Far Right, and Al Taqwa”, Coogan writes of Nada’s attorney Pier Felice Barchi:

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The Akida Bank of Nasreddin was also supposed to be concerned with the spreading of Islamic banking practices. The Lugano-registered affiliate of the bank listed along with its founder Nasreddin, the Tessino-based Pier Felice Barchi. This attorney had great experience with rich and influential foreign customers. Barchi was also concerned with the Tessino financial interests of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi and the Saudi minority partner in Berlusconi’s media group Mediaset, Prince al-Waleed al Talal.

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So Pier Felice Barchi, attorney for the director of the Muslim Brotherhood’s bank, is not only a partner at the same firm that the Swiss Attorney General who called off the al-Taqwa investigation, but he’s also a financial advisor for both former Italian right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (who’s connections to the far-Right are extensive and will be covered in detail later) and Prince al-Waleed al Talal. Prince al-Waleed al Talal is the 5^th richest man in the world and a major shareholder in AOL TimeWarner, Apple, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and the largest shareholder in Citibank.

Turning again to Kevin Coogan’s “Report on Islamists, the Far Right, and Al Taqwa, let’s take another quick look at the people involved with the founding of al-Taqwa and see if we can’t get a better sense of the kind of folks we’re looking at here:

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On July 21, 1988, at the bureau of a Lugano-based notary named Gianluca Boscaro gathered Huber, the Swiss professor (Hochschulleher) Mohammed Mansour and his wife Zeinab Mansour Fattouh as well as the Tunisian Youssef Nada and Ali Ghaleb Himmat, who both live in the Italian enclave of Campione d’Italia in Switzerland. Himmat had come from Damascus in 1958 and first settled down in Germany and then in Austria. The Alexandrian-born Egyptian Nada two years later came first to Austria and then to Germany. Nada’s oldest daughter married the son of the director of the Islamist center in Aachen, al-Attar Issam, who is considered by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsklpoll0chutz) one of the most dangerous Islamists in Germany. Nada later settled down in Ticino (Tessin). Both Nada and Himmat are members of the Muslim Brotherhood and in the 1990s both took Italian citizenship.

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So Nada’s daughter is married to Issam al-Attar (also spelled “al-Attar Issam”), considered one of the most dangerous Islamists in Germany. A leader-in-exile of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Issam is also the brother of Najah al-Attar, who recently became Syria’s first female vice president. And relating to 9/11, recall that the Hamburg Cell of 9/11 hijackers, led by lead-hijacker Mohammed Atta (who joined the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled “Engineers Syndicate”), were also members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. This raises interesting questions about how the ascension of the sister of a Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader to the vice presidency of Syria might complicate an already-complicated relationship between the CIA and the secular Syrian government on matters pertaining to tracking the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda (matters that include the Syrian government reversing a long-standing ban on the Brotherhood and now allowing it to operate within Syria).

Continuing with Coogan’s report on the founding members of of al-Taqwa and their far-right brethren…

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The goal of the meeting with the notary was the founding of "al-Taqwa Management Organization SA" that said it would be concerned with importing and exporting various goods around the world. 333 of the 1000 shares (at 100 Swiss Francs a share) went to Mohammed Mansour and his wife. 332 went to Huber. Nada and Himmet took the rest. Mansour was named the president but rarely was it mentioned the clause in the contract papers that each decision must be co-signed by the minority holders Nada and Himmat. Meanwhile Nada became associated with such prestigious groups as the Pio Manzu think tank, which is located on the Adriatic Coast and includes the likes of Gianni Agnelli and Henry Kissinger.

When Nada was questioned in October 2001 first by the Italian and later by the Swiss public prosecutors he said he was innocent of any involvement in terrorism. Nor could he remember where all the "Zakat" money went. This got a friendly laugh from the officials who could fill his memory lapse with a huge amount of documentation. Youssef Nada and his friends had also founded al-Taqwa Bank in Nassau in the Bahamas. As the "purpose of the enterprise" they listed the care of private investments of the shareholders as well as expected clients in the carrying out of Scharia Law given in the Islamic banking world. Among the 500 shareholders besides Huber, Himmat and Nada were "also a notorious right extremist from Italy" [not further identified but this is Alessandro Karim Abdul Ghe - KC] and three members of the bin Laden family.
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If that’s not enough references to far-rightist ties to the Muslim Brotherhood’s european bank, take look at the final section of Coogan’s report about an Swiss news article (a copy of which can apparently be found here) detailing a particularly chilling meeting Ahmed Huber had in April 2002…

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Huber and the Mount Pelerin Meeting
Perhaps the most recent remarkable story concerning Huber comes from a brief item in the Swiss tabloid Blick that in an April 26, 2002 article by Alexander Sautter that Huber was involved in a meeting of far-right leaders from Europe. A photo showing Huber with Jean Marie Le Pen accompanies the article. The Blick story (available on the web) is as follows:

Mont Pelerin VD: Christian Cambuzat, the promoter (Scharfmacher) of the right extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen (73): The guru assembles together some of the top leaders of the European right. On the idyllic Mont Pelerin, they debate their crude ideas.

At his secret visit to a spa in Switzerland Le Pen hardly remained alone. Rightist leaders from all over Europe traveled to meet the extremist presidential candidate who was hosted by Cambuzat. Franz Schonhuber (79). Founder of the Republican Party in Germany and a former member of the SS. He talked with Le Pen who constitutes together with Schonhuber the "Front National" Fraction in the European parliament.

Gianfranco Fini (50). Italian post-fascist, Mussolini admirer, and founder of the Allenza National. He also was at the meeting with Le Pen and Schonhuber.

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Gianfranco Fini’s party, Alleanza Nazionale, is the modern-day successor to Mussolini’s party, and was the second largest bloc of Berlucsoni’s coalition government. Fini was made Italy’s Foreign Minister in November, 2004.

Continuing…

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Ahmed Huber (74). The Swiss is on the Bush Administration blacklist... "I met le Pen at Mont Pelerin as he went to Christian Cambuzat’s spa," Huber told Blick yesterday. At the extremist rendezvous an American far right politician was also supposed to have taken part. [Note: The American is not further identified. – KC] Christian Cambuzat said that Le Pen (after the elections) had again become the sharpest weapon of the "Front National" because Le Pen changed his image from a venomous old man to a "kindly U.S. TV evangelist." Proudly Cambuzat brags, "With me Le Pen can relax well" [from his political endeavors – KC]. And openly link up with new contacts.

[Although the Blick story does not give details, Cambuzat runs a spa for very rich, the Lemanique de Revitalisation, inside a hotel on the famous Mont Pelerin.]

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Ahmed Huber’s attendance at a meeting of european far-rightists that include Jean-Marie Le Pen, Gianfranco Fini, and an unnamed American far-rightist highlights both the kind international coordination enjoyed between the far-rightist throughout world, and their ties to radical Islamists. Who was the American far-rightists? Who knows, perhaps it was David Duke, whose global travels included a November 2005 trip to Damascus, where he expressed his support for Syria’s government and their mutual fight against Zionism. It’s the kind of trip Ahmed is no stranger to, so let’s take a closer look at fine fellow, Ahmed Huber.

Ahmed Huber, a bridge between radical Islam, the New Right, and your next headache …

So who is Ahmed Huber? Well, on top of managing the Muslim Brotherhood’s international financial network, he travels the “far-Right” speaking circuit, carrying a message of unity between radical Islamists, far-rightists, and even White Separatists (yes, unity with the White Separatists):

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Unlikely Allies Bound by a Common Hatred
Neo-Nazis Find They Share Views of Militant Muslim Groups on U.S., Israel

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 29, 2002; Page A13

BERN, Switzerland -- A portrait of Adolf Hitler has long adorned the study of Ahmed Huber, a 74-year-old Swiss convert to Islam who lives outside this small capital city. After Sept. 11, he twinned the picture with one of Osama bin Laden.

"A provocation," said Huber, the voluble proponent of a strange alliance, one apparently strengthened in the aftermath of Sept. 11: Muslim fundamentalists and neo-Nazis, who share a hatred of the United States, Israel and Jews.

For years, Huber has been barnstorming the far-right circuit, speaking to a European congress of neo-Nazi youth organizations and Germany's far-right National Democratic Party. He has taken the same message to Aryan youth meetings in the United States.

And then there's his other identity. Huber works frequently with militant Islamic groups. He is a director of Nada Management, a Swiss company described by the U.S. Treasury Department as a financial adviser to bin Laden's terrorist network. He acknowledges having met al Qaeda operatives, but denies any financial role in the organization.

In an interview here, Huber said his role is to build a bridge between radical Muslims and what he calls the New Right in Europe and the United States.

"The alliance has come," Huber said. "The 11th of September has brought together [the two sides] because the New Right has reacted positively in a big majority. They say, and I agree with them 100 percent, what happened on the 11th of September, if it is the Muslims who did it, it is not an act of terrorism but an act of counterterrorism."

Other members of far-right groups and people who study the movements agree that the September attacks pushed some members of the groups together. "There is a sense of sympathy, [a sense] that there is common ground," Horst Mahler, a member of the National Democratic Party, said in an interview at his home outside Berlin. "There are contacts with political groups, in particular in the Arab world, also with Palestinians. That's a fact that is not being concealed."

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If anyone would be familiar with the alliance between Arab militants and extremists, it’s Horst Mahler. Mr. Mahler has been part of extremist alliances with militant Middle Eastern groups during his tenures on both the extreme right and extreme left. Mahler was a key member of, and one of the brains behind, the far-left Red Army Faction (RAF) in the early 70’s. The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, waged a terrorist campaign in Germany throughout the 70’s and 80’s (The RAF disbanded in 1998, although questions remain). In the early 70’s RAF members, including Mahler, received urban warfare training at Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) training camps in Lebanon. This alliance between the RAF and militant Palestinians gained international attention during the German Autumn of 1977 when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 in coordination with the RAF’s kidnapping of Hanns Martin Schleyer.

Mahler, who was in prison during this period, had been kicked out of the RAF. It was during this time in prison that he befriended a couple of now-prominent politicians: ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroder and Schoder’s interior minister Otto Schily. He was released from prison in the early 80s and regained his law licensed with the support of Schroder. Mahler re-emerged in the public sphere in the late 90’s with a far-Right anti-semitic ideology, eventually becoming the lawyer of the Germany’s neo-nazi National Democratic Party (NPD).

Another example of far-Right cooperation with the PFLP took place in September of 1972, when PFLP members hijacked a Lufthansa flight that happened to include the late Robert F. Kennedy’s son, Joseph Kennedy. That operation was orchestrated in part by Francois Genoud(4), a friend and associate the PFLP co-founders George Habash and Wadie Haddad (5)

Continuing…

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How many of Germany's estimated 58,000 neo-Nazis are taking part in the alliance is unclear; to date there is no evidence that neo-Nazi violence against Muslim immigrants, a recurring problem in Germany, has declined.

Alfred Schobert, a researcher at the Information Service Against Right-Wing Extremism in Duisburg, Germany, sees divisions among neo-Nazis on the issue. "Some of them, particularly the grass roots, are traditional racists and they want to have nothing to do with Muslims," he said. "But some of the leaders see potential in this."

Certainly the events of Sept. 11 produced fits of joy among some members of the European far right, according to groups that monitor hate speech.

Young supporters of the National Front in France drank champagne on the evening of Sept. 11, according to groups opposing neo-Nazis. A Czech far-rightist, Jan Kopul, proclaimed bin Laden "an example for our children." At a fascist youth rally in Switzerland, activists wore bin Laden badges.

German neo-Nazi Mario Schulz burned a U.S. flag at a post-Sept. 11 rally, exclaiming in front of skinheads wearing Palestinian scarves, "This is what it looks like, the symbol of terror."

In the same period, the writings of William L. Pierce, the American whose novel "The Turner Diaries" inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, have appeared on the Web site of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group linked to Iran. Pierce also has been interviewed regularly on Radio Iran by telephone from his compound in West Virginia.

"We have a common cause: getting the U.S. government off the back of the rest of the world and getting the Jews off the back of the U.S. government," Pierce said in a telephone interview. "There is ground for joint action." He ruled out violence on the grounds that "we're so outgunned by the government."

Authorities in the United States and Europe are skeptical of an enduring alliance. "It's an unnatural bond," said an FBI official in Washington. A German official offered a similar assessment: "I don't see it. They both hate the Jews, but in the end, they also dislike each other."

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To say William Pierce rules out violence is a bit of a stretch considering his book is widely considered to be an inspiration and a manual for such a violent overthrow by the far-Right underground. His 1978 work, The Turner Diaries, recounts a joint fascist global takeover by a guerrilla underground movement that succeeds, partially through the use of biological weapons. Dr. Larry Ford, a California doctor who committed suicide in 2000 after being charged with murder, appears to have been part of such an underground, and one connected to the apartheid-era South African government. Dr. Ford was found to have worked with the South African government on Project Coast, which sought to create black-specific biological weapons. Dr. Ford once told a girlfriend that if she wants to understand him, she should read the Turner Diaries.

At the same time, for FBI officials to voice skepticism over the durability of such a far-Right/Islamist alliance is also a bit of a stretch (just ask Hezbollah). As we’re going to see in a part 5, the alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Third Reich back in the 30’s and 40’s was quite strong.

Continuing…

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The outlines of cooperation were visible before Sept. 11. In 1991, German neo-Nazis tried to form a "Condor Legion" to fight alongside Iraqis against the U.S.-led international coalition. More recently, members of the European far right have journeyed to Baghdad to express solidarity with President Saddam Hussein.

In late 1997, a German neo-Nazi and convert to Islam, Steven Smyrek, who allegedly trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, was arrested in Israel for planning a suicide attack, according to the Duisburg center.

Also that year, a Holocaust denial conference planned for Beirut would have brought together Pierce, Mahler of Germany's National Democratic Party, who planned to speak on "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question," and representatives of Hezbollah and other radical Muslim groups. The conference was canceled by Lebanon's government.

According to Huber, some Nazi veterans also feel common cause with Islamic militants.

By his account, a group of aging SS officers and members of Hitler's personal guard who meet every few weeks in the German state of Bavaria for beer and conversation recently bestowed the title "honorary Prussian" on bin Laden. They praised his "valiant fight" against the United States, Huber said.

One of the members called Huber after the meeting to tell him that henceforth they had decided to call the al Qaeda leader "Herr von Laden," Huber said.

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That’s Ahmed Huber: when he’s not managing the Muslim Brotherhood’s financial network he’s networking with Islamist militants, barnstorming the US far-right speaking circuit, and meeting with aging SS officers who praise “Herr von Laden”. And Huber doesn’t have to travel to Bavaria for these kinds of SS get-togethers. He just has to go camping.

Ahmed Huber and the Avalon Society: woody retreats for anti-Enlightenment elites …

Back home in Switzerland there’s the Avalon Society, a group of aging Swiss SS volunteers that meets to embrace their Celtic past and reject modern society. Since 1998 Ahmed Huber, the devout Islamist, has been leading it. Let’s briefly explore the Avalon Society and get a better sense of the shared ideologies between the far-Right and Islamist extremists in another article by Kevin Coogen, Achmed Huber, The Avalon Gemeinschaft, and the Swiss "New Right" :

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Achmed Huber, The Avalon Gemeinschaft, and the Swiss "New Right"

Achmed Huber is not only a devout Muslim and supporter of political Islam; he also a leading member of the avowedly pagan Swiss-based Avalon Gemeinschaft ("Avalon Society" also known as the Avalon Kreis or Avalon Circle). Avalon's estimated 150 members include aging Swiss SS volunteers, youthful far right fanatics, and died-in-the wool Holocaust deniers. Each summer solstice this motley mélange of characters journeys deep into the Swiss woods to ritually worship the pre-Christian Celtic gods of ancient Europe. They then spend the rest of the year bemoaning the Enlightenment and denying the Holocaust.

Although Huber is one of Avalon's leading members, he was not involved in founding the group. Avalon began as a curious mixture of Old Right and New Right currents that reflected its founding members involvement in a far right youth group known as the Wiking-Jugend Schweiz (WJS) as well as their later rejection of cadre-based politics for the creation of Avalon as a self-proclaimed elite society. Besides being steeped in mystical imagery, Avalon's founders also embraced "New Right" jargon most frequently associated with the French theorist Alain de Benoist, his Paris-based think-tank, GRECE (the Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes pour la Civilisation Européene), and GRECE's German counterpart, Pierre Krebs‚ Thule Seminar.

…

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Ahmed Huber is apparently a very busy man. So might the purpose be for this Swiss society?

Skipping down in the Kevin Coogan’s article…

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…

Avalon functions as a kind of umbrella organization for the Holocaust denial movement in Switzerland. Under the cover name of the Studiengruppe für Geschichte (History Study Group), for example, Avalon sponsored a 1993 presentation by leading French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson at a hotel conference room in Bern. Some 70 people, including the NEO's Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, attended the gathering. Huber's close friend Jürgen Graf, a leading Swiss Holocaust denier who is now living in Tehran, provided the simultaneous translation from French to German when Faurisson spoke. Robert H. Countess, an American editor of the Institute for Historical Review, also addressed an Avalon gathering in April 1995. Huber's later participation (along with Graf and the German NPD's Horst Mahler) in an IHR conference that was to have occurred in Beirut in the spring of 2001 can be seen as a logical extension of the kind of Holocaust denial activity that both Huber and Avalon have been involved with for years.

Finally, it seems particularly ironic that a self-proclaimed Muslim like Huber would be associated at all with any "New Right" grouping, even with a pale parody of the New Right, as Avalon appears to be. Huber, after all, is a self-proclaimed devotee of Islam, an utterly monotheistic religion. In the New Right canon, monotheism has always been portrayed as the original sin. This has been so ever since de Benoist identified the Enlightenmen’s universalistic values as a secular extension of a monotheist worldview; namely the Judeo-Christian tradition which Islam claims to complete.

New Right theorists insist that they embrace paganism and the pagan notion of a universe of pluralistic gods precisely out of their desire to dethrone monotheistic thought structures which they see as essential to the future elimination of American "monoculture." That a fanatical Islamic monotheist like Huber could spend each summer solstice out in the woods worshiping Celtic gods is one more bizarre twist to his already bizarre life.

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Bizarre indeed. A bizarre, surreal, and very real alliance between the far-Right Christians, pagans, and radical Islam. Real and not particularly new. What are we to make of this? Who knows, and compared to what we’re about to look at in our next chapter of disturbing facts, the bizarro-world life of the Muslim Brotherhood’s bankers are are going to seem almost quaint. So what’s the topic going to be of our next essay? The Saudi/Musim Brotherhood’s US-based network of institutions and foundation. There are lots more names and places to absorb, but they’re important for understanding some of the powerful forces at work in out world, so keep reading!!!

Offline References:

(1) Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copyright 2000 [SC]; Algora Publishing; ISBN 1-892941-06-6; p239-241

(2) ibid p140-141

(3) ibid p213-214

(4) Philadelphia Inquirer; “Hitler’s Swiss Connection;” David Lee Preston; Jan 5, 1997

(5) Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International; By Kevin Coogan; Copyright 1999 [SC]; Autonomedia; ISBN 1-57027-039-2; p587;