Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #513 Keep Following the Money

Record­ed June 5, 2005
Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

Focus­ing on the sus­pen­sion of the Swiss inves­ti­ga­tion into Bank al-Taqwa, the pro­gram notes the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to that dis­missal: fail­ure of the US, Sau­di and Bahami­an author­i­ties to pro­vide key doc­u­ments under­mined the inves­ti­ga­tion. The untime­ly death of key wit­ness Ali bin Musal­im didn’t help either. Beyond al-Taqwa, the broad­cast sets forth analy­sis on the past present and future of al-Taqwa’s par­ent orga­ni­za­tion, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

Rumored to be on the verge of breakup, the Broth­er­hood might go under­ground, if inter­na­tion­al pres­sure grows too great. The Broth­er­hood has been mak­ing a bid for legit­i­ma­cy late­ly. Some with­in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and relat­ed think tanks feel we should be court­ing the Broth­er­hood, which has been able to present a janus-faced orga­ni­za­tion to the world. While engag­ing in real demo­c­ra­t­ic activ­i­ty where fea­si­ble, the orga­ni­za­tion also is the foun­da­tion of Islamist ter­ror­ism and Islam­ic fas­cism over the decades. One should nev­er over­look the fact that the Broth­er­hood and Bank al-Taqwa are deeply con­nect­ed to the Norquist/Rove/Islamist milieu with­in George W. Bush’s GOP.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Bin Musalim’s appar­ent involve­ment in the Hunt family’s attempts at cor­ner­ing the sil­ver mar­ket in the ear­ly 1980’s; the Sau­di col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Hunt sil­ver scheme; the World War II-era ori­gins of the Iraqi Islam­ic Par­ty (the Iraqi branch of the Broth­er­hood); the Ger­man Mus­lim Brotherhood’s piv­otal role in the organization’s world-wide oper­a­tions; the role of Ger­man Broth­er­hood (IGD) alum­ni in the found­ing of Bank al-Taqwa; the IGD con­sid­ered as an oper­a­tional and his­tor­i­cal par­a­digm for the Brotherhood’s glob­al­ized oper­a­tions.

1. One of the most impor­tant devel­op­ments in the cov­er-up of the 9/11 inves­tiga­tive trail is the sus­pen­sion of the Swiss inves­ti­ga­tion into Youssef Nada and the Bank al-Taqwa. (For more about Bank al-Taqwa and its con­nec­tions to the Third Reich, ele­ments of the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and the GOP, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 343, 354, 416, 454, 455, 456, 462, 464, 473, 514, 515.) “Swiss pros­e­cu­tors sus­pend­ed one of the most cel­e­brat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions into alleged ter­ror­ist financ­ing, say­ing there is insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to bring the case to tri­al. Although the inves­ti­ga­tion wasn’t dropped and the sus­pects’ names weren’t cleared, it is a par­tial vin­di­ca­tion for Youssef Nada and Ghaleb Him­mat, who were accused by Wash­ing­ton of using Nada Man­age­ment Orga­ni­za­tion and their Bank al-Taqwa to sup­port al Qae­da and oth­er ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. Short­ly after the Sept. 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks in the U.S., the two men and three of their asso­ciates were placed on a ter­ror­ist-financ­ing list that was adopt­ed by the Unit­ed Nations, effec­tive­ly freez­ing their assets and mak­ing it impos­si­ble for them to trav­el. Those restric­tions remain in place. . . .”
(“Swiss Won’t Bring Big Teror-Finance Case to Tri­al” by Ian John­son; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 6/2/2005; P. A11.)

2. “ . . . Mr. Him­mat said in a phone inter­view that pros­e­cu­tors ‘have seen there is noth­ing at all. Now we have to keep strug­gling to clear our names for our children’s sake.’ Swiss pros­e­cu­tors, who led the inter­na­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion, said the deci­sion isn’t a defeat. Pros­e­cu­tor spokesman Han­sjurg Mark Wied­mer said the charges weren’t dropped because ‘there are very seri­ous doubts in our office about the peo­ple being inves­ti­gat­ed. But there was not enough to bring them to tri­al.’” (Idem.)

3. The inves­ti­ga­tion was ham­pered by the fail­ure of the Bahamas Bank al-Taqwa to coop­er­ate with this inves­ti­ga­tion. The Saud­is also with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence. As we shall see in FTR#514, the U.S. author­i­ties also with­held crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion deemed essen­tial to the al-Taqwa inves­ti­ga­tion. “Mr. Wied­mer said finan­cial author­i­ties in the Bahamas, where Bank al-Taqwa was reg­is­tered, refused to answer numer­ous requests for help. In addi­tion, the bank’s books were stashed at an undis­closed pri­vate address in Sau­di Ara­bia, he said, and with­out them, pros­e­cu­tors were stymied. He said Messrs. Nada and Him­mat weren’t oblig­ed to hand over the books. ‘This was the essen­tial gap in the chain of evi­dence,’ Mr. Wied­mer said. Offi­cials in the Bahamas attor­ney general’s office didn’t return phone calls request­ing com­ment. . . .” (Idem.)

4. Note the George Wolfe let­ter about Mr. bin Mus­sal­im. The late Mr. bin Mussalim’s untime­ly death also helped de-rail the Swiss inves­ti­ga­tion. Mr. bin Mussalim’s demise is cov­ered below. “ . . . Wash­ing­ton appears to have made exten­sive efforts to pro­vide Swiss inves­ti­ga­tors with U.S. gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion about the alleged ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions of Nada and Al Taqwa. In a Feb. 4, 2002, let­ter to Swiss author­i­ties, George Wolfe, U.S. Trea­sury deputy gen­er­al coun­sel, said that U.S. gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ed that Al Taqwa had ‘long been thought to be involved in financ­ing rad­i­cal groups’ like Hamas and sev­er­al North African Islamist fac­tions. Accord­ing to the let­ter, as of ‘late Sep­tem­ber 2001’—after 9/11—‘bin Laden and his Al Qae­da orga­ni­za­tion received finan­cial assis­tance’ from Nada and a now-deceased Sau­di asso­ciate, Ali bin Mus­sal­im. The let­ter claimed that since the 1980’s, Nada and Mus­sal­im ‘fol­low­ing the pull­out of the Sovi­et Army from Afghanistan, [had] been pro­vid­ing direct invest­ment ser­vices for Al Qae­da, invest­ing funds for bin Laden, and mak­ing cash deliv­er­ies on request to the Al Qae­da orga­ni­za­tion.’”
(“Probe Closed” by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosen­ball; Newsweek; 6/3/2005; p. 1 [of 3].)

5. Again, note the sig­nif­i­cance of the Wolfe let­ter about bin Mus­sal­im: Accord­ing to the let­ter, as of Octo­ber 2000, Bank Al Taqwa, a Nada enti­ty with an off­shore bank­ing license from the gov­ern­ment of the Bahamas, ‘appeared to be pro­vid­ing a clan­des­tine line of cred­it for a close asso­ciate of Osama bin Laden. This bin Laden lieu­tenant had a line of cred­it with a Mid­dle East finan­cial insti­tu­tion that drew on an iden­ti­cal account num­ber at Bank Al Taqwa.’ The let­ter also not­ed that Nada had ‘per­son­al ties’ with Sad­dam Hus­sein and that one of his fel­low Al Taqwa direc­tors, retired Swiss jour­nal­ist Ahmed Huber, had ‘extreme anti-Israel views,’ had admit­ted meet­ing Bin Laden fol­low­ers in Beirut, and had defend­ed the 9/11 attack­ers.’” (Idem.)

6. Mr. bin Mus­sal­im was found dead, a month after the Wolfe let­ter became pub­lic! A forth­com­ing book by Guil­laume Dasquie (the co-author, along with Jean Charles Bris­ard, of For­bid­den Truth) charges that bin Mus­sal­im had a Sau­di pass­port. “A Swiss-based busi­ness­man accused by the US Trea­sury of pro­vid­ing finan­cial help to Osama bin Laden and al-Qae­da car­ried a Sau­di diplo­mat­ic pass­port, accord­ing to copies of doc­u­ments con­tained in a book pub­lished on Thurs­day in Paris. The doc­u­ments include a let­ter from the US Trea­sury to the Swiss author­i­ties, which says that al-Qae­da and its leader received finan­cial assis­tance from the busi­ness­man Ali bin Mus­sal­im ‘as of late Sep­tem­ber 2001’. They also include a copy of Mr. bin Mus­sal­im’s diplo­mat­ic pass­port. The dis­clo­sures, con­tained in Al-Qae­da Will Con­quer (Al-Qa’i­da Vain­cra), by the author Guil­laume Dasquie, will be uncom­fort­able read­ing for the Sau­di gov­ern­ment, which has dis­put­ed any sug­ges­tions of offi­cial com­plic­i­ty in the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11 2001.”
(“Swiss-Based al-Qae­da Sus­pect Had Sau­di Pass­port” by Stephen Fidler; Finan­cial Times; 4/27/2005; p. 1.)

7. Could Mr. bin Mussalim’s death been the result of foul play? “The Jan­u­ary 2002 let­ter from George Wolfe, then the US Trea­sury’s deputy gen­er­al coun­sel, says Mr. bin Mus­sal­im ‘has been pro­vid­ing indi­rect invest­ment ser­vices for al-Qae­da, invest­ing funds for bin Laden, and mak­ing cash deliv­er­ies on request to the al-Qae­da orga­ni­za­tion.’ The let­ter links him to the now defunct Bank al-Taqwa and its founder, Youssef Nada. Both have been named by the US and Unit­ed Nations as providers of ter­ror­ist finance. The exis­tence of the let­ter has been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed by some news orga­ni­za­tions, but Mr. bin Mus­sal­im’s diplo­mat­ic sta­tus was not empha­sized. Accord­ing to the book, Mr. bin Mus­sal­im was found dead in his res­i­dence in Lau­sanne last June, a month after reports of the US Trea­sury let­ter first emerged. . . . [Empha­sis added.]” (Idem.)

8. An intrigu­ing aspect of the late, unfor­tu­nate Mr. bin Mussalim’s career con­cerns his ille­gal activ­i­ties in the U.S. Those activ­i­ties involved col­lab­o­ra­tion in the attempt­ed cor­ner­ing of the sil­ver mar­ket. Prin­ci­pal fig­ures in that were the Saud­is and Nel­son Bunker Hunt, son and heir to the late H.L. Hunt. Bunker Hunt has been a promi­nent far-right activist for many years, most recent­ly rec­og­nized for his role in Oliv­er North’s off-the-shelf oper­a­tion to sup­port the Con­tra gueril­las in Nicaragua. “ . . . Mr. bin Mussalim’s role in con­tro­ver­sial finan­cial deal­ings goes back to the ear­ly 1980s, when US pros­e­cu­tors accused him and oth­ers of attempts to cor­ner the sil­ver mar­ket. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

9. More about the Hunt/Saudi col­lab­o­ra­tion in the attempt­ed cor­ner­ing of the sil­ver mar­ket:“ . . . DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Wash­ing­ton learn that before he left, Abdul­lah met the heads of the Dal­las-based Hung Pri­vate Equi­ty Group to dis­cuss pri­vate invest­ments in the com­pa­ny. More than 20 years ago, Abdul­lah and oth­er Sau­di princes were heav­i­ly invest­ed with the group and suf­fered major loss­es when the price of sil­ver col­lapsed. [Empha­sis added.] His con­fer­ence with Hunt’s direc­tors aimed at dis­plac­ing some of these bad mem­o­ries with advan­ta­geous Sau­di invest­ments in the Unit­ed States. . . .”
(DEB­KA-Net-Week­ly Issue #204, 5/6/2005.)

10. Nada is a cousin of Arafat, who is a nephew of the Grand Mufti. In FTR#416, we looked at Nada’s role in the escape of the Grand Mufti from Ger­many to Pales­tine. “ . . . Nada, a cousin of Arafat and friend of Sad­dam Hus­sein, proud­ly iden­ti­fies him­self as the Brotherhood’s for­eign min­is­ter. . . .”
(“A Seri­ous Set­back for Ter­ror Finance Pros­e­cu­tions” By Dou­glas Farah; 6/01/05.)

11. There had been reports of the Broth­er­hood frag­ment­ing and going under­ground, in light of the heat applied inter­na­tion­al­ly on its orga­ni­za­tions. How the sus­pen­sion of the inves­ti­ga­tion into Bank al-Taqwa will affect this remains to be seen. “On the face of it, a lit­tle-noticed report in a Lon­don-based Ara­bic-lan­guage news­pa­per last week seemed to sig­nal a major vic­to­ry in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s inter­na­tion­al cam­paign to crack down on alleged financiers of Islam­ic ter­ror­ism. Accord­ing to the Nov. 11 edi­tion of Al-Sharq-al-Awsat, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Orga­ni­za­tion, an inter­na­tion­al fun­da­men­tal­ist move­ment that spawned many of the world’s key Islam­ic extrem­ist and ter­ror­ist groups—including Al Qaeda—recently held a secret con­fer­ence at which its lead­ers dis­cussed whether to dis­solve their orga­ni­za­tion in the wake of Wash­ing­ton’s moves to crack down on some of its lead­ing mem­bers and cor­po­rate orga­ni­za­tions.
(“The End of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood?” By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosen­ball [Newsweek]; MSNBC.Com; 11/24/2004; p. 1.)

12. “But like oth­er devel­op­ments in what the admin­is­tra­tion calls the glob­al war on ter­ror, the alleged move by the Broth­er­hood to abol­ish itself may have less sub­stance than meets the eye. Indeed, it may even mean that efforts by the U.S. and its allies to move against financiers of Islam­ic ter­ror groups will become more dif­fi­cult. U.S. intel­li­gence and diplo­mat­ic sources point out that some Arab nations banned the Broth­er­hood years ago. Notable among those coun­tries is Syr­ia, where for­mer pres­i­dent Hafez Assad’s bru­tal crack­down against the Broth­er­hood in the ear­ly 1980s left thou­sands of mil­i­tants dead. Instead of dri­ving the broth­er­hood out of busi­ness in Syr­ia, how­ev­er, the crack­down there forced some of its lead­ing mem­bers into exile in coun­tries like Ger­many, where Syr­i­an Broth­er­hood expa­tri­ates ulti­mate­ly helped to recruit to the cause of Islam­ic jihad a group of Ham­burg poly­tech­nic stu­dents who lat­er became 9/11 hijack­ers. Oth­er Broth­er­hood activists in Syr­ia sim­ply went under­ground for years, only to resur­face lat­er inside Syr­ia with new orga­ni­za­tion­al names, under which the cur­rent Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment of the cur­rent Syr­i­an pres­i­dent, Bashar Assad, son of Hafez, allows them to oper­ate under the watch­ful eye of secu­ri­ty agen­cies. . . .” (Idem.)

13. Note that some Amer­i­can ana­lysts and diplo­mats believe the U.S. should be court­ing the Broth­er­hood as a strate­gic ally. “ . . .Peace in our time! . . .” “. . . Some fed­er­al agents wor­ry that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has dan­ger­ous links to ter­ror­ism. But some U.S. diplo­mats and intel­li­gence offi­cials believe its influ­ence offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty for polit­i­cal engage­ment that could help iso­late vio­lent jihadists. ‘It is the pre­em­i­nent move­ment in the Mus­lim world,’ said Gra­ham E. Fuller, a for­mer CIA offi­cial spe­cial­iz­ing in the Mid­dle East. ‘It’s some­thing we can work with.’ Demo­niz­ing the Broth­er­hood ‘would be fool­hardy in the extreme’ he warned.”
(“In Search of Friends Among the Foes: U.S. Hopes to Work with Diverse Group” by John Mintz and Dou­glas Farah; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 9/11/2004; p. A01.)

14. “The Broth­er­hood’s his­to­ry and the chal­lenges it pos­es to U.S. offi­cials illus­trate the com­plex­i­ty of the polit­i­cal front in the cam­paign against ter­ror­ism three years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. FBI agents and finan­cial inves­ti­ga­tors probe the group for ter­ror­ist ties and legal vio­la­tions, while diplo­mats simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­cuss strate­gies for co-opt­ing at least its mod­er­ate wings. In both sec­tors of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, the Broth­er­hood often remains a mys­tery. The Brotherhood—of al-Ikhwan al-Mus­limun, as it is know in Arabic—is a sprawl­ing and secre­tive soci­ety with fol­low­ers in more than 70 coun­tries. It is ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing an Islam­ic civ­i­liza­tion that harks back to the caliphates of the 6th and 7th cen­turies, one that would seg­re­gate women from pub­lic life and scorn non­be­liev­ers.” (Idem.)

15. Note the role of Sau­di oil bil­lions in help­ing to estab­lish the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Unit­ed States. (Nada and Him­mat sired six chil­dren in the U.S. between 1979 and 1984. For more about this see FTR#455.)“In some nations—Egypt, Alge­ria, Syr­ia, Sudan—the Broth­er­hood has foment­ed Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion. In the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries, the Broth­er­hood cre­at­ed the Islam­ic Resis­tance Move­ment, or Hamas, which has become known for its sui­cide bomb­ings of Israelis. Yet is also a sophis­ti­cat­ed and diverse orga­ni­za­tion that appeals to many Mus­lims world­wide and some­times advo­cates peace­ful per­sua­sion, not vio­lent revolt. Some of its sup­port­ers went on to help found al Qae­da, while oth­ers launched one of the largest col­lege stu­dent groups in the Unit­ed States. For decades the Broth­er­hood enjoyed the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment of Sau­di Ara­bia and its oil bil­lions, which helped the group expand in the Unit­ed States. . . .” (Ibid.; pp.1–2)

16. The U.S. recent­ly detained, and then released, the head of the Iraqi Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Note that his par­ty was formed in 1944 at the direc­tion of the Broth­er­hood founder Has­san al-Ban­na, a loy­al ally of Nazi Ger­many. This party—like the rest of the Broth­er­hood at this time—was undoubt­ed­ly allied with the Nazis at an under­ground lev­el. “U.S. troops detained the head of Iraq’s largest Sun­ni Mus­lim polit­i­cal par­ty on Mon­day, accord­ing to par­ty offi­cials, police and the man’s wife. South of the cap­i­tal, two sui­cide bombers attacked a crowd of police­men in Hillah, killing 20 and wound­ing near­ly 100 . . . . The arrests came on the sec­ond day of Oper­a­tion Light­ning, a mas­sive Iraqi-led anti-insur­gent offen­sive in Bagh­dad that Abdul-Hamid’s par­ty oppos­es, believ­ing secu­ri­ty forces will tram­ple on inno­cent people’s rights.”
(“Iraqi Mus­lim Leader Detained; 20 Killed” [AP]; p. 1.)

17. “Abdul-Hamid was tak­en from his home in the west­ern Bagh­dad sub­urb of Khadra at about 6 a.m., along with his three sons and four guards, said par­ty-sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Ayad al-Samarei. Al Samarei accused Amer­i­can sol­diers of raid­ing Abdul Hamid’s home and con­fis­cat­ing var­i­ous items, includ­ing a com­put­er. U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials could not imme­di­ate­ly con­firm the deten­tions. Iraqi offi­cials were also reluc­tant to talk about the issue. . . .” (Idem.)

18. “The Iraqi Islam­ic Par­ty (IIP) will not adopt vio­lence as an approach to resist the U.S.-Anglo occu­pa­tion of Iraq, the party’s Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr. Mohsen Abdul Hamid said Wednes­day, April 23. Speak­ing to IslamOnline.net, Abdul Hamid reject­ed any kind of coop­er­a­tion with an occu­pa­tion-installed gov­ern­ment. ‘It’s abun­dant­ly clear that we reject the pres­ence of the U.S. occu­pa­tion in Iraq, but we will not use vio­lence in resist­ing it,’ he said. ‘Armed con­fronta­tion is use­less and we will resist (the occu­pa­tion) peace­ful­ly. The par­ty and oth­er Iraqi reli­gious and nation­al fac­tions are on board when it comes to this, no doubt.’”
(Arti­cle excerpt­ed from IslamOnline.net; 4/23/2005p. 3.)

19. Note again the World War II ori­gins and affil­i­a­tions of Mr. Hamid’s Broth­er­hood off­shoot. “ ‘The par­ties in Iraq are a dime a dozen . . . Any­body can stroll five per­sons togeth­er and form a par­ty,’ Abdul Hamid said, refer­ring to the anar­chy and free-for-all loot­ing that swept Iraq. ‘But the IIP (Iraq’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) is a time-hon­ored par­ty that dates back to 1944, when Imam Has­san al-Ban­na (the founder of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in 1928) dis­patched his close ally Dr. Hus­sein Kamal Eddin. But the then gov­ern­ment did not allow us to name the par­ty after the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and we instead estab­lished the soci­ety of Islam­ic broth­er­hood, which played a piv­otal role in whip­ping up reli­gious zeal in Iraq at that point in time,’ he added [Empha­sis added.] . . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

20. Its janus-faced stance on vio­lent jihad has giv­en the Islamo-fas­cist Broth­er­hood con­sid­er­able oper­a­tional lat­i­tude. It can cred­i­bly present itself as “pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic” and active­ly pur­sue mil­i­tary jihad selec­tive­ly around the world. The fol­low­ing arti­cle sets forth the evo­lu­tion of the Broth­er­hood in Europe. Much of its suc­cess is root­ed in main­tain­ing extrem­ist goals and meth­ods while main­tain­ing cred­i­ble, estab­lished social and cul­tur­al sta­tus. Recall as you read this that Sau­di petro-dol­lars have estab­lished the Broth­er­hood in a big way right here in the USA! “Since its found­ing in 1928, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (Hizb al-lkhwarTal-Mus­limun) has pro­found­ly influ­enced the polit­i­cal life of the Mid­dle East. Its mot­to is telling: ‘Allah is our objec­tive. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our high­est hope.’ While the Broth­er­hood’s rad­i­cal ideas have shaped the beliefs of gen­er­a­tions of Islamists, over the past two decades, it has lost some of its pow­er and appeal in the Mid­dle East, crushed by harsh repres­sion from local regimes and snubbed by the younger gen­er­a­tions of Islamists who often pre­fer more rad­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions.”
(“The Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Con­quest of Europe” by Loren­zo Vidi­no, Mid­dle East Quar­ter­ly; Win­ter 2005; p. 1.)

21. “But the Mid­dle East is only one part of the Mus­lim world. Europe has become an incu­ba­tor for Islamist thought and polit­i­cal devel­op­ment. Since the ear­ly 1960s, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­bers and sym­pa­thiz­ers have moved to Europe and slow­ly but steadi­ly estab­lished a wide and well-orga­nized net­work of mosques, char­i­ties, and Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions. Unlike the larg­er Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s ulti­mate goal may not be sim­ply ‘to help Mus­lims be the best cit­i­zens they can be,’ but rather to extend Islam­ic law through­out Europe and the Unit­ed States.” (Idem.)

22. “Four decades of teach­ing and cul­ti­va­tion have paid off. The stu­dent refugees who migrat­ed from the Mid­dle East forty years ago and their descen­dants now lead orga­ni­za­tions that rep­re­sent the local Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties in their engage­ment with Europe’s polit­i­cal elite. Fund­ed by gen­er­ous con­trib­u­tors from the Per­sian Gulf, they pre­side over a cen­tral­ized net­work that spans near­ly every Euro­pean coun­try. These orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent them­selves as main­stream, even as they con­tin­ue to embrace the Broth­er­hood’s rad­i­cal views and main­tain links to ter­ror­ists. With mod­er­ate rhetoric and well-spo­ken Ger­man, Dutch, and French, they have gained accep­tance among Euro­pean gov­ern­ments and media alike. Politi­cians across the polit­i­cal spec­trum rush to engage them when­ev­er an issue involv­ing Mus­lims aris­es or, more parochial­ly, when they seek the vote of the bur­geon­ing Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.” (Idem.)

23. “But, speak­ing Ara­bic or Turk­ish before their fel­lows Mus­lims, they drop their facade and embrace rad­i­cal­ism. While their rep­re­sen­ta­tives speak about inter­faith dia­logue and inte­gra­tion on tele­vi­sion their mosques preach hate and warn wor­ship­pers about the evils of West­ern soc

iety. While they pub­licly con­demn the mur­der of com­muters in Madrid and school chil­dren in Rus­sia, they con­tin­ue to raise mon­ey for Hamas and oth­er ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. Euro­peans, eager to cre­ate a dia­logue with their increas­ing­ly dis­af­fect­ed Mus­lim minor­i­ty, over­look this duplic­i­ty. The case is par­tic­u­lar­ly vis­i­ble in Ger­many, which retains a place of key impor­tance in Europe, not only because of its loca­tion at the heart of Europe, but also because it played host to the first major wave of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood immi­grants and is host to the best-orga­nized Broth­er­hood pres­ence. The Ger­man gov­ern­men­t’s reac­tion is also instruc­tive if only to show the dan­gers of accept­ing Mus­lim Broth­er­hood rhetoric at face val­ue, with­out look­ing at the broad­er scope of its activ­i­ties.” (Idem.)

24. “The sit­u­a­tion in Ger­many is par­tic­u­lar­ly telling. More than any­where else in Europe, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Ger­many has gained sig­nif­i­cant pow­er and polit­i­cal accep­tance. Islamist orga­ni­za­tions in oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries now con­scious­ly fol­low the mod­el pio­neered by their Ger­man peers. Dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, thou­sands of Mus­lim stu­dents left the Mid­dle East to study at Ger­man uni­ver­si­ties, drawn not only by the Ger­man insti­tu­tions’ tech­ni­cal rep­u­ta­tions but also by a desire to escape repres­sive regimes. Egypt­ian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime was espe­cial­ly vig­or­ous in its attempts to root out the Islamist oppo­si­tion. Begin­ning in 1954, sev­er­al mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fled Egypt to escape arrest or assas­si­na­tion. West Ger­many pro­vid­ed a wel­come refuge. Bon­n’s moti­va­tions were not sim­ply altru­is­tic. As ter­ror­ism expert Khalid Duran explained in his stud­ies on jihadism in Europe, the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment had decid­ed to cut diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with coun­tries that rec­og­nized East Ger­many. When Egypt and Syr­ia estab­lished diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with the com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment, Bonn decid­ed to wel­come Syr­i­an and Egypt­ian polit­i­cal refugees. Often, these dis­si­dents were Islamists. Many mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood were already famil­iar with Ger­many. Sev­er­al had coop­er­at­ed with the Nazis before and dur­ing World War 11. Some had even, report­ed­ly, fought in the infa­mous Bosn­ian Hand­schar divi­sion of the Schutzstaffel (SS).” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

25. “One of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s first pio­neers in Ger­many was Said Ramadan, the per­son­al sec­re­tary [and son-in-law] of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood founder Has­san al-Ban­na. Ramadan, an Egypt­ian who had led the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s irreg­u­lars in Pales­tine in 1948, moved to Gene­va in 1958 and attend­ed law school in Cologne. In Ger­many, he found­ed what has become one of Ger­many’s three main Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions, the Islamis­che Gemein­schaft Deutsch­land (Islam­ic Soci­ety of Ger­many, IGD) over which he presided from 1958 to 1968. Ramadan also co-found­ed the Mus­lim World League, a well-fund­ed orga­ni­za­tion that the Sau­di estab­lish­ment uses to spread its rad­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam through­out the world. The U.S. gov­ern­ment close­ly mon­i­tors the activ­i­ties of the Mus­lim World League, which it accus­es of financ­ing ter­ror­ism.” (Idem.)

26. Note the March 20, 2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids in the con­text of what has been set forth so far. “In March 2002, a U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment-led task force raid­ed the group’s North­ern Vir­ginia offices look­ing for doc­u­ments tying the group to AI-Qae­da, Hamas, and Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad. In Jan­u­ary 2004, the Sen­ate Finance Com­mit­tee asked the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice for its records on the Mus­lim World League ‘as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into pos­si­ble links between non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and ter­ror­ist financ­ing net­works.’ This priv­i­leged rela­tion­ship with the oil-rich king­dom grant­ed Ramadan an influx of mon­ey, which he used to fund the pow­er­ful Islam­ic Cen­ter of Gene­va and to bankroll sev­er­al finan­cial and reli­gious activ­i­ties. Hani Ramadan, Sa’id’s son, cur­rent­ly runs the Islam­ic Cen­ter. Among its oth­er board mem­bers is Sa’id’s oth­er son, Tariq Ramadan, who recent­ly made head­lines in the Unit­ed States when the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty revoked his visa to teach at Notre Dame Uni­ver­si­ty. Sa’id Ramadan’s case is not iso­lat­ed.” (Idem.)

27. Note the piv­otal role of mem­bers of the IGD (the Ger­man Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) in the found­ing and oper­a­tion of the Bank al-Taqwa: “Fol­low­ing Ramadan’s ten-year pres­i­den­cy of the IGD, Pak­istani nation­al Fazal Yaz­dani briefly led the IGD before Ghaleb Him­mat, a Syr­i­an with Ital­ian cit­i­zen­ship, took the helm. Dur­ing his long stew­ard­ship (1973–2002), Him­mat shut­tled between Italy, Aus­tria, Ger­many, Switzer­land and the Unit­ed States. Intel­li­gence agen­cies around the world have long scru­ti­nized Him­mat’s ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions. He is one of the founders of the Bank al-Taqwa, a pow­er­ful con­glom­er­ate dubbed by Ital­ian intel­li­gence, ‘Bank of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood,’ which has financed ter­ror­ist groups since the mid-1990s if not ear­li­er. Him­mat helped Youssef Nada, one of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s finan­cial mas­ter­minds, run Al-Taqwa and a web of com­pa­nies head­quar­tered in loca­tions such as Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, and the Bahamas, Which main­tain few reg­u­la­tions on mon­e­tary ori­gin or des­ti­na­tion. Both Him­mat and Nada report­ed­ly fun­neled large sums to groups such as Hamas and the Alger­ian Islam­ic Sal­va­tion Front and set up a secret cred­it line for a top asso­ciate of Osama bin Laden.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

28. “In Novem­ber 2001, the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment des­ig­nat­ed both Him­mat and Nada as ter­ror­ism financiers. Accord­ing to Ital­ian intel­li­gence, the AI-Taqwa net­work also financed sev­er­al Islam­ic cen­ters through­out Europe and many Islamist pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Risala­tuI lkhwan, the offi­cial mag­a­zine of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. After the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment des­ig­na­tion, Him­mat resigned from the IGD’s pres­i­den­cy. His suc­ces­sor was Ibrahim el-Zay­at, a 36-year-old of Egypt­ian descent and the charis­mat­ic leader of numer­ous stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

29. Not­ing the promi­nence in the IGD in the Broth­er­hood and the found­ing of al-Taqwa, the pro­gram goes on to high­light the pro­found influ­ence on the IGD of the orig­i­nal Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. “The fact that IGD lead­ers Ramadan and Him­mat are among the most promi­nent Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­bers of the last half-cen­tu­ry sug­gests the links between the IGD and the Ikhwan. More­over, reports issued by inter­nal intel­li­gence agen­cies from var­i­ous Ger­man states open­ly call the IGD an off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In par­tic­u­lar, accord­ing to one intel­li­gence report, the Egypt­ian branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has dom­i­nat­ed the IGD since its ear­ly days.” (Idem.)

30. Note said Ramadan. His activ­i­ties recruit­ing assas­sins inside the Unit­ed States is dis­cussed in FTR#381. “The Mus­lim Brotherhood—led by Ramadan and Himmat—sponsored the con­struc­tion of the impos­ing Islam­ic Cen­ter of Munich in 1960, aid­ed by large dona­tions from Mid­dle East­ern rulers such as King Fahd of Sau­di Ara­bia who, accord­ing to a 1967 Sued­deutsche Zeitung arti­cle, donat­ed 80,000 marks. The Min­istry of Inte­ri­or of Nor­drhein-West­falen states that the Islam­ic Cen­ter of Munich has been one of the Euro­pean head­quar­ters for the Broth­er­hood since its foun­da­tion. The cen­ter pub­lish­es a mag­a­zine, Al-lslam, whose efforts (accord­ing to an Ital­ian intel­li­gence dossier), are financed by the Bank al-Taqwa. Accord­ing to the inte­ri­or min­is­ter of Baden-Wurtem­berg, Al-lslam shows explic­it­ly how the Ger­man Broth­ers reject the con­cept of a sec­u­lar state. Its Feb­ru­ary 2002 issue, for exam­ple, states, ‘In the long run, Mus­lims can­not be sat­is­fied with the accep­tance of Ger­man fam­i­ly, estate, and tri­al law. ... Mus­lims should aim at an agree­ment between the Mus­lims and the Ger­man state with the goal of a sep­a­rate juris­dic­tion for Mus­lims.’” (Idem.)

31. “The IGD, of which the Islam­ic Cen­ter of Munich is one of the most impor­tant mem­bers, rep­re­sents the main off­shoot of the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood in Ger­many. Bu

t the IGD is also the quin­tes­sen­tial exam­ple of how the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has gained pow­er in Europe. The IGD has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the years, and it now incor­po­rates dozens of Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions through­out the coun­try. Islam­ic cen­ters from more than thir­ty Ger­man cities have joined its umbrel­la. Today, the IGD’s real strength lies in its coop­er­a­tion with and spon­sor­ship of many Islam­ic youth and stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions across Ger­many.” (Idem.)

32. Note the IGD milieu’s con­nec­tions to the WAMY. This orga­ni­za­tion has many trib­u­taries, includ­ing sev­er­al run­ning in the direc­tion of the GOP’s Islamist com­po­nent, as well as the al-Taqwa milieu and Al Qae­da. “This focus on youth orga­ni­za­tions came after Zay­at’s suc­ces­sion. He under­stood the impor­tance of focus­ing on the next gen­er­a­tion of Ger­man Mus­lims and launched recruit­ment dri­ves to get young Mus­lims involved in Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions. But a Meck­en­heim police report on the sharply dressed Zay­at also reveals alarm­ing con­nec­tions. Ger­man author­i­ties open­ly say he is a mem­ber of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. They also link him to the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth (WAMY), a Sau­di non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion that seeks to spread Wah­habism, the rad­i­cal and intol­er­ant Sau­di inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam, through­out the world with its lit­er­a­ture and schools. WAMY, which falls under the umbrel­la of the Mus­lim World League, has the stat­ed goal of ‘arm­ing the Mus­lim youth with full con­fi­dence in the suprema­cy of the Islam­ic sys­tem over oth­er sys­tems.’ It is the largest Mus­lim youth orga­ni­za­tion in the world and can boast unpar­al­leled resources. In 1991 WAMY pub­lished a book called Tawji­hat Islamiya (Islam­ic Views) that stat­ed, ‘Teach our chil­dren to love tak­ing revenge on the Jews and the oppres­sors, and teach them that our young­sters will lib­er­ate Pales­tine and AI-Quds [Jerusalem] when they go back to Islam and make jihad for the sake of Allah.’ The sen­ti­ments in Tawji­hat Islamiya are the rule rather than the excep­tion. Many oth­er WAMY pub­li­ca­tions are filled with strong anti-Semit­ic and anti-Chris­t­ian rhetoric.” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

Discussion

No comments for “FTR #513 Keep Following the Money”

Post a comment