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With pub­lic atten­tion focused on the attacks of 9/11 by the pub­lic hear­ings of the com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the assault, Mr. Emory is pro­duc­ing sev­er­al pro­grams con­sol­i­dat­ing key infor­ma­tion about the attacks. This is one of those “com­pen­dia.” At the foun­da­tion of the Al Qae­da orga­ni­za­tion in par­tic­u­lar and Islamist ter­ror­ism in gen­er­al is the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. FTR#455 presents much of the most impor­tant infor­ma­tion about the Broth­er­hood from past pro­grams in a sin­gle pack­age. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the fas­cist her­itage of the Broth­er­hood (dat­ing to its found­ing in 1928), the pro­gram sets forth the fascis­tic influ­ence on its theo­crat­ic ide­ol­o­gy. In addi­tion, the pro­gram high­lights the­Broth­er­hood’s fas­cist oper­a­tional con­nec­tions in the post­war peri­od. The Bank Al Taqwa is the Broth­er­hood’s chief finan­cial con­duit and has been impli­cat­ed in the fund­ing of Al Qae­da and Hamas. This pro­gram sets forth the role of the Broth­er­hood in set­ting up the bank, and presents infor­ma­tion that under­scores the Broth­er­hood’s pro­found involve­ment in ter­ror­ist activities–its dis­claimers to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing. In addi­tion to its influ­ence in the Mid­dle East, the Broth­er­hood is a sig­nif­i­cant force among Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions in Europe. It is impor­tant to note that the Broth­er­hood has main­tained impor­tant con­tacts among the con­ser­v­a­tive GOP inter­ests with which the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is close­ly iden­ti­fied, as well as with Mus­lim con­gre­ga­tions and stu­dent groups in the Unit­ed States.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The role of the Broth­er­hood and its main func­tionary Said Ramadan in set­ting up the Bank Al Taqwa; Ramadan and the Broth­er­hood’s piv­otal influ­ence in the estab­lish­ment of the Sau­di-financed Mus­lim World League; alle­ga­tions by French intel­li­gence spe­cial­ists that Ramadan’s son Tariq is involved with ter­ror­ist ele­ments; the alle­ga­tion that Tariq Ramadan is the nephew of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rah­man (in prison for plot­ting in con­nec­tion with the first attack upon the World Trade Cen­ter); Said Ramadan’s rela­tion­ship with Nazi banker and ter­ror­ist financier Fran­cois Genoud; Ramadan’s selec­tion of Munich Ger­many as a base of oper­a­tions for the Broth­er­hood fol­low­ing its expul­sion from Egypt; the influ­ence of the Broth­er­hood in Turkey; the influ­ence of the Broth­er­hood on the French UOIF par­ty; the pro­found con­nec­tions between the Broth­er­hood and the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002; the pres­ence of Youssef Nada and Ali Galeb Him­mat in the Unit­ed States between 1979 and 1984; the con­nec­tions of Ahmed Huber and the Al Taqwa milieu in the Iran­ian shi­ite com­mu­ni­ty; the fund­ing of mosques in the Unit­ed States by the Broth­er­hood; con­nec­tions between African Amer­i­can Mus­lim con­gre­ga­tions and the Al Taqwa milieu; the pres­ence in the U.S. of Said Ramadan in the 1970’s; Ramadan’s recruit­ment of an African-Amer­i­can Mus­lim to work as an assas­sin for the Iran­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists.

1. Dis­cussing the dias­po­ra of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fol­low­ing its expul­sion from Egypt, the pro­gram dis­cuss­es the estab­lish­ment of Munich as its pri­ma­ry base of oper­a­tions. ” ‘Why Munich, why Ger­many?’ I asked Rifaat Said. ‘Because there, one finds old com­plic­i­ties that go back to the late 1930’s, when the Mus­lim Broth­ers col­lab­o­rat­ed with the agents of Nazi Ger­many. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] . . . By soak­ing up the sav­ings of these Mus­lim work­ers, Yussef Nada, like Said Ramadan, took advan­tage of an extreme­ly favor­able con­text and used it as a spring­board for the Mus­lim Broth­ers’ eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties.’ ”
(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The Unit­ed States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algo­ra Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 153)

2. Nada him­self (the head of the Broth­er­hood’s Bank Al Taqwa) is alleged to have been an agent of the Abwehr, the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Third Reich. “But Yussef Nada is even bet­ter-known to the Egypt­ian [intel­li­gence] ser­vices, who have evi­dence of his mem­ber­ship in the armed branch of the fra­ter­ni­ty of the Mus­lim Broth­ers in the 1940’s. At that time, accord­ing to the same sources, he was work­ing for the Abwehr under Admi­ral Canaris and took part in a plot against King Farouk. This was not the first time that the path of the Mus­lim Broth­ers crossed that of the ser­vants of the Third Reich.” (Ibid.; 140–141.)

3. High­light­ing the polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of the “Fra­ter­ni­ty” (author Richard Labaviere’s nick­name for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood), the pro­gram sets forth the fas­cist ori­en­ta­tion of this orga­ni­za­tion. “The his­to­ry of the Fra­ter­ni­ty makes the Broth­ers’ con­cept of the Islam­ic State clear: a theo­crat­ic State of fascis­tic inspi­ra­tion. . . . Some of them were fel­low trav­el­ers of the Nazis, and are still try­ing today to resus­ci­tate the old alliance of Islamism and the swasti­ka.” (Ibid.; p. 121.)

4. “Muham­mad Said al-Ash­mawy con­tin­ued: ‘All my research always brings me back to the same point: at the begin­ning of this process of the per­ver­sion of Islam are the Mus­lim Broth­ers, an extreme Right cult.’. . . An extreme Right cult? ‘The his­to­ry of the Mus­lim Broth­ers is infused and fas­ci­nat­ed by fascis­tic ide­ol­o­gy,’ Said al-Ash­mawy adds. ‘Their doc­trines, their total (if not total­i­tar­i­an) way of life, takes as a start­ing point the same obses­sion with a per­fect city on earth, in con­for­mi­ty with the celes­tial city whose orga­ni­za­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of pow­ers they can dis­cern through the lens of their fan­tas­ti­cal read­ing of the Koran.’ This ‘Fascis­tic affil­i­a­tion’ would crop up in the analy­ses of sev­er­al of our inter­locu­tors, in par­tic­u­lar that of the jour­nal­ist Eric Rouleau, who is a spe­cial­ist in the Mid­dle East, for­mer French ambas­sador to Tunisia and Turkey.” (Ibid.; p. 124.)

5. As not­ed in FTR#332, FTR#340 and FTR#343, the fas­cists used anti-colo­nial sen­ti­ment in the Third World to recruit con­fed­er­ates to fight against Britain and France. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood was uti­lized in this fash­ion. “Last­ly, the emer­gence and the rise to pow­er of Fas­cism, hos­tile to French and British colo­nial­ism, gave rise to many analo­gies with cor­po­ratist pro­pa­gan­da and the meth­ods of mobi­liza­tion of Mus­solin­i’s gangs.” (Ibid.; p. 126.)

6. The theo­crat­ic fas­cism of the Broth­er­hood was enun­ci­at­ed by the orga­ni­za­tion’s founder, Has­san al-Ban­na. ” ‘Islam is doc­trine, divine wor­ship, the father­land, the nation, reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, the Koran and the sword.’ ” (Idem.)

7. Fur­ther high­light­ing the com­par­isons between the Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic pro­gram and those of Mus­soli­ni and Hitler, the broad­cast con­tin­ues: “Tak­ing Italy’s choic­es under Mus­soli­ni for inspi­ra­tion, the eco­nom­ic pro­gram set three pri­or­i­ties . . . The social pol­i­cy fore­saw a new law on labor, found­ed on cor­po­ra­tions. This eco­nom­ic pro­gram would more direct­ly reveal its rela­tion­ship to total­i­tar­i­an ide­olo­gies a few years lat­er, with the works of Mohamed Ghaz­a­li . . . . Mohamed Ghaz­a­li rec­om­mend­ed ‘an eco­nom­ic reg­i­men sim­i­lar to that which exist­ed in Nazi Ger­many and fas­cist Italy.’ . . .The moral code is also an impor­tant com­po­nent in this pro­gram, which is intend­ed to cre­ate the ‘new Mus­lim man.’ . . . The notion of the equal­i­ty of the sex­es is inher­ent­ly negat­ed by the con­cept of the suprema­cy of male social respon­si­bil­i­ties . . .the ‘nat­ur­al’ place of the woman is in the home.” (Ibid.; p. 127.)

8. Next, the pro­gram turns to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s piv­otal role in the found­ing of Al Taqwa—its pri­ma­ry finan­cial organ. (For more about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, see “Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism” by Marc Erik­son [Asia Times]. For more about Al Taqwa, see three very impor­tant arti­cles by Kevin Coogan.) This part of the pro­gram access­es infor­ma­tion from an inter­view with Richard Labeviere, author of Dol­lars for Ter­ror. Note the cen­tral role of the lead­er­ship of the Broth­er­hood (Said Ramadan in par­tic­u­lar) in the found­ing of Bank Al Taqwa. “LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR:–In one of your works, you claim that the father of Tariq Ramadan, Said, was one of the founders of bank Al Taqwa, sus­pect­ed by the Unit­ed States to have financed Al Qae­da. RICHARD LABEVIERE:–In April 1998 in Cairo, I inter­viewed Mustapha Masshur, the Guide of the Broth­er­hood of the Moslem Broth­ers, at the seat of this orga­ni­za­tion, locat­ed at the edge of the Nile. One had then evoked the oper­a­tion of the Islam­ic banks. The Guide assured me that Yussef Nada, the financier of the Moslem Broth­ers, and Said Ramadan, the father of Tariq Ramadan, were friend­ly since their escape from Egypt, in the mid­dle of the 1950’s and that they were at the ori­gin of the cre­ation of bank Al Taqwa, the fidu­cia­ry com­pa­ny based in Lugano, whose seat was in the Bahamas. This estab­lish­ment man­aged the mon­ey of the mem­bers of the Broth­er­hood. The Guide, now deceased, said to me that the Ramadan broth­ers always act­ed in the log­ic of their great father—Hassan el Ban­na, and that they were regard­ed as agents of the inter­ests of the founder of the Broth­er­hood.”
(“Secrets of the Finan­cial Holy War [Inter­view with Richard Labeviere]”; La Nou­v­el Obser­va­teur; 1/31/2004; pp. 1–2.)

9. “N.O.:–That does not make any [of them], there­fore, the accom­plices of Bin Laden. R. LABEVIERE:–No, of course [not], But this bank, Al Taqwa, is sus­pect­ed by the FBI, this short­ly after the 11th of Sep­tem­ber, to have tak­en part in the financ­ing of Bin Laden. It [Al Taqwa] is repro­duced on the black list of the Amer­i­cans. How­ev­er, this kind of Islam­ic bank is qua­si-impen­e­tra­ble. It does not have the right to make inter­est, it thus makes assem­blages of risk capital.—Translation: it invests in con­crete oper­a­tions, financ­ing of NGO, etc. In fact, mul­ti-stage finan­cial arrange­ments feed a myr­i­ad of char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions. It is what the spe­cial­ists call bleach­ing back [laundering]—it is a zigzag, a labyrinth in which the inves­ti­ga­tors lose them­selves, inevitably. When one exam­ines the finan­cial exer­cis­es of these estab­lish­ments, a whole fringe of their activ­i­ties is reg­is­tered under the head­ing of zakat, the reli­gious tax, the oblig­a­tion of char­i­ty, a tru­ly for­bid­den zone. How­ev­er one knows that the zakat is used to finance off­shore com­pa­nies, pro­tect­ed per­fect­ly by the same bank secre­cy, and also the Islam­ic NGO’s, which are com­plete­ly unver­i­fi­able and uncon­trolled. Thus, since Novem­ber 2001, bank Al Taqwa changed names but Yussef Nada, the friend of Said Ramadan, con­tin­ues its activ­i­ties. The inves­ti­ga­tion does noth­ing but cre­ate pub­lic­i­ty.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

10. The pro­gram high­lights the pow­er of Sau­di cap­i­tal in pre­vent­ing the inter­dic­tion of Islamist fund­ing sources. Note the fail­ure of Car­la del Ponte to move suc­cess­ful­ly against Sau­di cap­i­tal in Swiss banks. Del Ponte is a law part­ner of Pier Felice Barchi, the lawyer for Youssef Nada. (For more about Del Ponte, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#‘s 359, 446.) “N.O.—What can make the Swiss author­i­ties wrap up the mat­ter? R. LABEVIERE:–The prob­lem is that in Switzer­land, the bank­ing inter­ests are the absolute pri­or­i­ty for the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. It is imper­a­tive not to annoy the Saud­is and their bankers. The experts of FATF (Group of Finan­cial Action) con­sid­er the Sau­di assets placed in Switzer­land at between 30–60 bil­lion dol­lars. It is a vital activ­i­ty for this coun­try [Switzer­land]. So, nobody real­ly wants to unearth a scan­dal which could kill the hen that lays the gold­en eggs. Judge Car­la del Ponte even (when she was Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Con­fed­er­a­tion) after the attack at Lux­or in 1997, was accused of drag­ging her feat. To defend her­self, she explained that she was con­front­ed with a wall of mon­ey.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

11. It is worth not­ing that Said Ramadan was instru­men­tal in the found­ing of the Mus­lim World League, one of the pri­ma­ry Islamist out­reach organs of the Sau­di gov­ern­ment. (See the Harper’s arti­cle above, for more about the MWL.) “N.O.:–But the Ramadans are not direct­ly implied in this his­to­ry. R. LABEVIERE:–Historically, Said Ramadan was one of the founders of the Mus­lim World League, in 1961. It was he who advised the Saud­is to finance the Dawa in Europe, the prop­a­ga­tion of the faith, by mon­ey, a kind of finan­cial holy war. It is one of the key char­ac­ters of this ide­o­log­i­cal war. He [Said Ramadan] is a cen­tral fig­ure in the inter­na­tion­al branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The Egypt­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices sus­pect him of work­ing direct­ly for the Amer­i­cans in the 1960’s.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

12. Accord­ing to the book Dol­lars for Ter­ror, the orig­i­nal move by Said Ramadan to Switzer­land was to coor­di­nate the activ­i­ties of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood with those of Nazi banker Fran­cois Genoud. It was in this pre­cise time peri­od that Ramadan was instru­men­tal in the for­ma­tion of the Mus­lim World League. “Let us men­tion only the inci­dent of the trea­sure of the FLN, at the cen­ter of which the banker Fran­cois Genoud may be found. [Said] Ramadan and the Mus­lim Broth­ers thought that they could play a part in the Alger­ian process as they had done in Pales­tine in 1947. Said Ramadan thus left Munich to set­tle in the city of Calvin.”
(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The Unit­ed States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algo­ra Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 154)

13. The broad­cast exam­ines reports from Euro­pean intel­li­gence agen­cies that Tariq Ramadan, son of key Broth­er­hood patri­arch Said Ramadan, is not as far removed from oper­a­tional ter­ror­ist ele­ments as he claims to be. Euro­pean intel­li­gence sources point to an alleged famil­ial rela­tion­ship between Ramadan and Omar Abdel Rah­man. It is also alleged by the same sources that Tariq is much more heav­i­ly involved with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood than he claims to be. “For sev­er­al weeks, a Fed­er­al judge in the state of Wash­ing­ton has had on his desk reports from Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vices impli­cat­ing Tariq Ramadan in sev­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions into the activ­i­ties of Al Qae­da. Accord­ing to our sources, these reports were obtained by lawyers act­ing on behalf of the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims of the attack on the World Trade Cen­ter of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. A law­suit is cur­rent­ly being brought on behalf of 5,600 plain­tiffs seek­ing dam­ages and inter­est against the per­sons or groups sus­pect­ed of hav­ing sup­port­ed Osama bin Laden’s orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to Jean-Charles Bris­ard, for­mer mem­ber of the intel­li­gence ser­vices and now a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor hired by the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, this inter­na­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion has obtained the polit­i­cal and law-enforce­ment coop­er­a­tion of thir­ty coun­tries. Since the end of 2002, the Gene­va Islam­ic Cen­ter, where Tariq Ramadan sits on the board of direc­tors, and of which broth­er Hani Ramadan is the direc­tor, appears among the orga­ni­za­tions under inves­ti­ga­tion.”
(“Tariq Ramadan, Tar­get for Euro­pean Intel­li­gence Ser­vices” by Christophe Dubois; Le Parisien; 11/14/2003.)

14. “Sev­er­al of the new­er ele­ments of this inves­ti­ga­tion per­son­al­ly impli­cate the star preach­er to young French Mus­lims. Accord­ing to doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to Amer­i­can law-enforce­ment offi­cials, Tariq Ramadan is alleged­ly the nephew of Omar Abdel Rah­man, the plan­ner of the first attack on the World Trade Cen­ter, sen­tenced to life in prison in the Unit­ed States. Grand­son of the founder of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Has­san al-Ban­na, in 1993, Ramadan was alleged­ly put in charge of the Daawa (preach­ing for Europe by that Islamist orga­ni­za­tion. Ramadan denies the charges: ‘I am not relat­ed to Omar Abdel Rah­man and have no organ­ic ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.’ ” (Idem.)

15. “More­over, the name of the Mus­lim intel­lec­tu­al was cit­ed in sev­er­al anti-ter­ror­ist inves­ti­ga­tions. As part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into an Al-Qae­da cell in Spain, he was named as one of the ‘usu­al con­tacts’ for Ahmed Brahim, con­sid­ered to be one of al-Qaeda’s trea­sur­ers indict­ed in April 2003 by mag­is­trate Gar­zon. In par­tic­u­lar, his name is men­tioned dur­ing a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion of April 22, 1999, of which Le Parisien has a copy, between Ahmed Brahim and an offi­cial at the Tawhid book­store in Lyon, which pub­lished Ramadan’s books. The con­ver­sa­tion con­cerns the acqui­si­tion of blank audio cas­settes and the invi­ta­tion extend­ed to young French cit­i­zens in Major­ca to ‘work for the path of Allah.’ The Swiss intel­lec­tu­al is also named in the tri­al in France of a group sus­pect­ed of hav­ing planned an attack against the US embassy. Dja­mal Beghal, con­sid­ered to be net­work leader, told the inves­ti­gat­ing mag­is­trate Jean-Louis Bruguiere on Octo­ber 1, 2001: ‘In 1994, I fol­lowed cours­es taught by Tarik Ramadan.’ The preacher’s response” ‘I do not know Ahmed Brahim. My name was sim­ply men­tioned over the course of two harm­less con­ver­sa­tions . . . . More­over, I did­n’t begin teach­ing in Paris until 1997.’ Anoth­er charge against him: accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tions con­duct­ed by the lawyers act­ing on behalf of the fam­i­lies of the World Trade Cen­ter vic­tims, the Ramadan fam­i­ly address appears in a reg­is­ter at the Al Taqwa bank, which is on the Amer­i­can State depart­men­t’s list of orga­ni­za­tions accused of sup­port­ing Islamist ter­ror­ism. . . .” (Idem.)

16. It is also alleged by the same Euro­pean intel­li­gence sources that Ramadan was in oper­a­tional con­tact with Al Qaeda’s #2 man—Ayman al-Zawahiri. “The last item record­ed by the intel­li­gence ser­vices: Tariq Ramadan and his broth­er alleged­ly orga­nized a 1991 meet­ing in a Gene­va hotel at which both Ayman al-Zawahiri, cur­rent al-Qae­da num­ber 2, and Omar Abdel Rah­man were present. What of these ‘liaisons dan­gereuses’? ‘I have nev­er met these peo­ple.’ So many denials that do not impress Jean-Charles Bris­ard: ‘To-day there is a real stack of evi­dence point­ing to Tariq Ramadan’s hav­ing had rela­tions with sev­er­al ter­ror­ists,’ he says. ‘He has renounced the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood but he shares their her­itage. Under the cov­er of mod­er­a­tion, he is accu­mu­lat­ing a rad­i­cal­ism that may encour­age Jihad.’ ” (Idem.)

17. The next sec­tion of the pro­gram deals with grow­ing influ­ence of the Islam­o­fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Mid­dle East and in Europe. Begin­ning with an exam­i­na­tion of a Ger­man Islamist group affil­i­at­ed with the Refah Par­ty (the Turk­ish branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood), the pro­gram high­lights con­nec­tions between that par­ty and the AK par­ty cur­rent­ly gov­ern­ing Turkey. “Mil­li Gorus, Ger­many’s largest Islam­ic asso­ci­a­tion, recent­ly gained the offi­cial sup­port of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, despite being watched by Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vices due to alleged extrem­ist lean­ings. On April 19, Turkey’s reli­gious-con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment ordered its embassies to offer the Islamis­che Gemein­schaft Mil­li Gorus (IGMG) their sup­port. The group, formed in 1985 in Cologne to sup­port Turk­ish nation­al­ism and oppose the sep­a­ra­tion of state and reli­gion, has long been crit­i­cized by Ger­man offi­cials as being anti-Semit­ic and against lib­er­al West­ern val­ues.”
(“Turkey Offers Sup­port for Con­tro­ver­sial Islam­ic Group”; Deutsche Welle; 4/23/2003; p. 1.)

18. “Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Abdul­lah Gul on Sat­ur­day refused to dis­cuss his spe­cif­ic direc­tions to diplo­mats regard­ing Mil­li Gorus, say­ing only the gov­ern­ment ‘has for some time tried to strength­en the ties between our coun­try and our cit­i­zens over­seas.’ The deci­sion comes only two weeks after an agree­ment between Ger­many and Turkey on com­bat­ing orga­nized crime incensed many mem­bers of Turkey’s rul­ing AK par­ty because it includ­ed Mil­li Gorus with groups like the Kur­dish ter­ror­ist out­fit PKK. Since many AK mem­bers have ties to Islam­ic reli­gious groups, Gul was com­pelled to say he did not con­sid­er Mil­li Gorus a ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion.” (Idem.)

19. “Some observers say the attempt to reform its pub­lic image could be at least part­ly linked to the rise of Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan and his AK par­ty. Com­ing to pow­er in a land­slide vic­to­ry last year, Erdo­gan styles his par­ty as a mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tive group based on Mus­lim val­ues. He has dis­tanced him­self from for­mer men­tor Necmet­tin Erbakan, who found­ed the Islam­ic-influ­enced Wel­fare Par­ty. Erbakan’s nephew, Mehmet Sabri Erbakan, was IGMG chair­man until he left office after alleged­ly hav­ing an extra-mar­i­tal affair.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

20. Flesh­ing out dis­cus­sion of Necmet­tin Erbakan, his Refah par­ty and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the pro­gram high­lights Erbakan’s rela­tion­ship with Al Taqwa’s Ahmed Huber and the man­ner in which that rela­tion­ship pre­cip­i­tat­ed Huber’s ascen­sion to his posi­tion as a direc­tor of Al Taqwa. Speak­ing of the décor of Huber’s res­i­dence: “A sec­ond pho­to­graph, in which Hitler is talk­ing with Himm­ler, hangs next to those of Necmet­tin Erbakan and Jean-Marie Le Pen [leader of the fas­cist Nation­al Front]. Erbakan, head of the Turk­ish Islamist par­ty, Refah, turned to Achmed Huber for an intro­duc­tion to the chief of the French par­ty of the far right. Exit­ing from the meet­ing (which took place in Sep­tem­ber 1995) Huber’s two friends sup­pos­ed­ly stat­ed that they ‘share the same view of the world’ and expressed ‘their com­mon desire to work togeth­er to remove the last racist obsta­cles that still pre­vent the union of the Islamist move­ment with the nation­al right of Europe.’ ”
(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The Unit­ed States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copy­right 2000 [SC]; Algo­ra Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 1–892941-06–6; p. 142)

21. “Last­ly, above the desk is dis­played a poster of the imam Khome­i­ni; the meet­ing ‘changed my life,’ Huber says, with stars in his eyes. For years, after the Fed­er­al Palace in Bern, Ahmed Huber pub­lished a Euro­pean press review for the Iran­ian lead­ers, then for the Turk­ish Refah. Since the for­mer lacked finan­cial means, Huber chose to put his efforts to the ser­vice of the lat­ter. An out­post of the Turk­ish Mus­lim Broth­ers, Refah thus became Huber’s prin­ci­pal employ­er; and it was through the inter­me­di­ary of the Turk­ish Islamist par­ty that this for­mer par­lia­men­tary cor­re­spon­dent became a share­hold­er in the bank Al Taqwa.” (Idem.)

22. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence in the UOIF, which had a strong show­ing in the recent French elec­tions. ” . . . The group that made a sur­pris­ing­ly strong show­ing in the elec­tion is the Union of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in France. It preach­es a strict, con­ser­v­a­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam, derives much of its sup­port from the poor sub­urbs of Paris and oth­er major cities and is said to derive its inspi­ra­tion from the banned fun­da­men­tal­ist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which orig­i­nat­ed in Egypt. It won 14 of 41 seats in the gov­ern­ing admin­is­tra­tive coun­cil. The orga­ni­za­tion has come under fire from those who claim it has close links with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which calls for Islam­ic rule via Islam­ic law, per­son­al purifi­ca­tion and polit­i­cal action, and can­not be offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized by a sec­u­lar coun­try like France.”
(“French Threat­en Expul­sions After Islam Rad­i­cal Vic­to­ry” by Elaine Sci­oli­no; New York Times; 4/16/2003; pp. 1–2.)

23. The UOIF has also had con­tact with the milieu of the Bank Al Taqwa. ” . . . It [Al Taqwa] effect­ed sev­er­al fund trans­fers to the prof­it of a chief of this orga­ni­za­tion, the Lebanese Fay­cal Maoulaoui, for­mer leader of the ‘Union of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions of France’ (UOIF), the Mus­lim Broth­ers’ orga­ni­za­tion in France. The trans­fers intend­ed for Maoulaoui were exe­cut­ed by the inter­me­di­ary of an account opened through the agency of Paribas in Lugano.”
(Dol­lars for Ter­ror; p. 148.)

24. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the pro­found con­nec­tions between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the SAAR net­work, the prin­ci­pal ele­ment in the orga­ni­za­tions tar­get­ed in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. As not­ed in FTR#454, the con­nec­tions between the SAAR net­work, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, ele­ments of the Al Taqwa milieu and the GOP and Bush admin­is­tra­tion are pro­found. “Anoth­er focus of the probe is the SAAR lead­ers’ links to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a 74-year-old group which is under inves­ti­ga­tion by Euro­pean and Mid­dle East­ern gov­ern­ments for its alleged sup­port of rad­i­cal Islam­ic and ter­ror­ist groups. For decades the broth­er­hood has been a well­spring of rad­i­cal Islam­ic activ­i­ty; Hamas, the mil­i­tant Pales­tin­ian group, is an off­shoot of it. Euro­pean offi­cials are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the broth­er­hood’s ties to lead­ing neo-Nazis, includ­ing the Swiss Holo­caust denier Ahmed Huber. A num­ber of cen­tral fig­ures in the SAAR net­work, includ­ing Rajhi, were for decades involved in the broth­er­hood, where they befriend­ed Nada, said rep­re­sen­ta­tives and friends of the SAAR offi­cials. The one-time rad­i­cal­ism of SAAR net­work mem­bers has mel­lowed since they moved to the Unit­ed States, SAAR asso­ciates said. Nada, 73, a native of Egypt, has been one of the broth­er­hood’s lead­ing fig­ures for years, and Euro­pean offi­cials say his net­work of banks and com­pa­nies, includ­ing bank al Taqwa and Aki­da Bank, are inti­mate­ly tied to the broth­er­hood. Euro­pean offi­cials say the two banks han­dled tens of mil­lions of dol­lars for the broth­er­hood over the years.”
(“U.S. Trails Va. Mon­ey, Ties” by Dou­glas Farah and John Mintz; Wash­ing­ton Post; 10/7/2002; p. 3.)

25. “A wealthy con­struc­tion mag­nate, Nada con­trols firms across Europe and the Arab world. Nasred­din, of Ethiopi­an descent, oper­ates a busi­ness empire inter­twined with Nada’s out of Milan. Found­ed in Egypt, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has over the decades helped stir a revival in Islam­ic pride and mil­i­tant oppo­si­tion to sec­u­lar Arab regimes. Gov­ern­ments in Egypt, Syr­ia and Iraq have harsh­ly cracked down on the group since the 1950’s. The orga­ni­za­tion, viewed as hero­ic in much of the Arab world, has recent­ly mod­er­at­ed some of its rad­i­cal stances.” (Idem.)

26. “Inves­ti­ga­tors said they have also uncov­ered numer­ous ties between SAAR enti­ties and Bank al Taqwa. Samir Salah—a founder of Safa Trust, SAAR’s suc­ces­sor, and an offi­cer of oth­er SAAR companies—helped estab­lish Bank al Taqwa in the Bahamas in the mid-1980’s, accord­ing to a Trea­sury doc­u­ment. In a let­ter to The Wash­ing­ton Post, Salah said he had no role with the bank. Ibrahim Has­s­a­bal­la, anoth­er offi­cer of some SAAR-relat­ed com­pa­nies, also helped set up Bank al Taqwa in the Bahamas, accord­ing to the doc­u­ment. Has­s­a­bal­la did not respond to numer­ous requests for com­ment.” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

27. “Ter­ror­ism spe­cial­ists say the sig­nif­i­cance of the SAAR net­work is that it could offer wealthy Per­sian Gulf financiers a cir­cuitous route for mon­ey they don’t want traced. ‘A rich Sau­di who wants to fund rad­i­cal ideas or ter­ror­ists like Hamas and al Qae­da knows he can’t send the mon­ey direct­ly, so he fil­ters it through com­pa­nies and char­i­ties, often in the U.S. or Europe,’ said Rita Katz, a ter­ror­ism expert at the pri­vate SITE Insti­tute in Wash­ing­ton. The SAAR orga­ni­za­tions are run by approx­i­mate­ly 15 Mid­dle East­ern and Pak­istani men, a num­ber of whom lie in two-sto­ry homes on adjoin­ing lots in Hern­don that were devel­oped by one of their affil­i­at­ed firms in 1987. SAAR rep­re­sen­ta­tives say most were born into devout Mus­lim fam­i­lies and some fell under the sway of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, fund­ed large­ly by Per­sian Gulf and par­tic­u­lar­ly Sau­di mon­ey, the men who would lat­er form the SAAR net­work fled their home­lands amid crack­downs on the broth­er­hood.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

28. It should be not­ed that the Al Taqwa/SAAR/Muslim Broth­er­hood milieu tar­get­ed in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids was well-entrenched in the busi­ness world and very pow­er­ful. The pow­er­ful al-Rajhi fam­i­ly of Sau­di Ara­bia was cen­tral­ly involved in the cre­ation of the SAAR net­work and is very influ­en­tial in the world of Amer­i­can busi­ness. “In Sau­di Ara­bia and the Unit­ed States, they helped launch groups that would evolve into some of the nation’s and the world’s lead­ing Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Mus­lim Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion, the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth and the Islam­ic Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca. In 1984, Yaqub Mirza, a Pak­istani native who received a PHD in physics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in Dal­las, used mon­ey from the Rajhis to start SAAR in Vir­ginia, with the goal of spread­ing Islam and doing char­i­ta­ble work. Mirza also sought out busi­ness ven­tures for SAAR. By invest­ing the Rajhis’ mon­ey with Wash­ing­ton real estate devel­op­er Mohamed Hadid, he made SAAR one of the region’s biggest land­lords in the 1980’s. The SAAR net­work also became one of South Amer­i­ca’s biggest apple grow­ers and the own­er of one of Amer­i­ca’s top poul­try firms, Mar-Jac Poul­try in Geor­gia. ‘The funds came very eas­i­ly,’ said a busi­ness­man who dealt with SAAR. ‘If they want­ed a few mil­lion dol­lars, they called the al-Rajhis, who would send it along . . .’ ” (Idem.)

29. One of the most star­tling rev­e­la­tions about Al Taqwa con­cerns the appar­ent sir­ing of six chil­dren by the Al Taqwa founders in the Unit­ed States! An edu­cat­ed guess would be that they were in the coun­try work­ing on the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s recruit­ment of fight­ers to go to Afghanistan to fight the Sovi­ets. The devel­op­ment of the anti-Sovi­et muja­hadin appears to have set the stage for the incu­ba­tion of an anti‑U.S. muja­hadin, cour­tesy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. ” . . . There are also indi­ca­tions that both Nada and Him­mat, the Al Taqwa prin­ci­pals who today live in an Ital­ian enclave bor­der­ing Switzer­land and have acquired Ital­ian cit­i­zen­ship, spent time in the Unit­ed States in the late 1970’s and ear­ly 1980’s. Accord­ing to a trans­lat­ed copy of a 1996 Ital­ian intel­li­gence report, they each had three chil­dren born in the Unit­ed States—five of them born in Sil­ver Spring, Md., between 1979 and 1984.”
(“Ter­ror Fund Trail Leads to Alpine King­dom” by Marc Perel­man; For­ward; 10/17/2003; p. 4.)

30. An omi­nous devel­op­ment con­cerns the infil­tra­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood into the U.S. and its appar­ent abil­i­ty to forge bonds with domes­tic Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions in this coun­try. This point will be dis­cussed at greater length below. Note, for the pur­pos­es of present dis­cus­sion, Yous­suf Al Qaradawi–a prin­ci­pal direc­tor of Al Taqwa. Soli­man Biheiri is also asso­ci­at­ed with Youssef Nada and oth­er Al Taqwa per­son­ages. ” . . . Accord­ing to the Kane affi­davit, Biheiri also had rela­tions with a promi­nent Egypt­ian reli­gious leader from the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood called Sheikh Yous­souf Qaradawi. He acknowl­edged host­ing him dur­ing when the sheikh vis­it­ed Amer­i­ca sev­er­al years ago, accord­ing to the affi­davit. Now liv­ing in Qatar, Qaradawi has been barred from enter­ing Amer­i­ca since Novem­ber 1999 because of his alleged sup­port for ter­ror­ism. He has issued fat­was sup­port­ing sui­cide bomb­ings in Israel and attacks on Amer­i­can troops in Iraq, accord­ing to doc­u­ments pro­duced by the Biheiri tri­al.” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

31. “Qaradawi is list­ed as one of the share­hold­ers of the Bahamas branch of Al Taqwa bank, accord­ing to a copy of a 1999 list of share­hold­ers in pos­ses­sion of the For­ward. This Branch shut down in April 2001. Press reports said the clo­sure was the result of Jor­dan­ian, French and Amer­i­can intel­li­gence reports which affirmed that Al Qae­da mon­ey com­ing from Kuwait and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates had been chan­neled through Al Taqwa. . . .” (Idem.)

32. In FTR#‘s 381, 386, 439 we exam­ined the inroads made by the Islam­o­fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood with­in the Unit­ed States. That top­ic is devel­oped at greater length here. The impli­ca­tions of hav­ing an orga­ni­za­tion like this oper­at­ing in the Unit­ed States are to be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered. Numer­ous broad­casts have dis­cussed an Under­ground Reich Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States com­posed of domes­tic allies of the Under­ground Reich and Islamofascist/Muslim Broth­er­hood ele­ments as well. It appears that the inroads the Broth­er­hood has made here are paving the way for seri­ous recruit­ment of U.S. Mus­lims to the Islamist cause. “One after­noon, Mustafa Saied, a junior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee, was sum­moned by a friend to a near­ly emp­ty cam­pus cafe­te­ria. The two set­tled them­selves in a qui­et cor­ner, and Mr. Saied’s friend invit­ed him to join the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. ‘Every­thing I had learned point­ed to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood being an awe­some thing, the elite move­ment,’ says Mr. Saied of his ini­ti­a­tion in 1994. ‘I can­not tell you the feel­ing that I felt—awesome pow­er.’ ”
(“A Stu­dent Jour­neys Into a Secret Cir­cle of Extrem­ism” by Paul M. Bar­rett; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 12/23/2003; p. A1.)

33. “On that day in Knoxville, Mr. Saied entered a secre­tive com­mu­ni­ty that was slow­ly build­ing a ros­ter of young men com­mit­ted to spread­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam in the U.S. A move­ment launched 75 years ago in Egypt, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has inspired ter­ror­ist acts, as well as social reform through­out the Mid­dle East and has chap­ters in some Euro­pean nations. Until recent­ly, law-enforce­ment offi­cials saw lit­tle evi­dence that the orga­ni­za­tion was active in the U.S. . . .” (Idem.)

34. Mr. Saied’s encoun­ters in the world of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood includ­ed com­ing in con­tact with Al Taqwa’s Al Qaradawi. ” . . . Like many activist Mus­lim stu­dents, Mr. Saied belonged to an Islam­ic study group. His often focused on the writ­ings of Youssef Al Qaradawi, an Egypt­ian cler­ic based in Qatar who is a lead­ing fig­ure in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood move­ment. Sheik Qaradawi is known among many Mus­lims as [being] rel­a­tive­ly mod­er­ate on such issues as rela­tions with the West, while endors­ing what he calls ‘mar­tyr­dom oper­a­tions’ against Israel and Jews. . . .” (Ibid.; p. A8.)

35. “Today, the Broth­er­hood remains an active, con­tro­ver­sial orga­ni­za­tion work­ing with­in the polit­i­cal sys­tems of some Arab coun­tries. Its vio­lent off­shoots include the fac­tion that assas­si­nat­ed Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat in 1981 and the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions Hamas and Islam­ic Jihad. Anoth­er out­growth of the Broth­er­hood, Egypt­ian Islam­ic jihad, is led by Osama bin Laden’s top lieu­tenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who merged his orga­ni­za­tion into the al Qae­da net­work in 1998. In the U.S., the Broth­er­hood has not oper­at­ed open­ly. But fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors say they are inves­ti­gat­ing whether Broth­er­hood mem­bers who arrived in the U.S. decades ago have used busi­ness­es and char­i­ties here to raise and laun­der mon­ey for ter­ror­ism abroad. . . .” (Idem.)

36. ” . . . In Decem­ber 1995, Mr. Saied attend­ed anoth­er Mus­lim Arab Youth Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence at a hotel in Tole­do, Ohio, Sheik Qaradawi, the cler­ic affil­i­at­ed with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, gave a speech lat­er tran­scribed and trans­lat­ed by the Inves­tiga­tive Project, a ter­ror­ism-research group based in Wash­ing­ton. Islam will ‘over­come all the reli­gions’ and dom­i­nate the world, the sheik told his audi­ence of sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple.” (Idem.)

37. “He quot­ed Islam­ic texts as say­ing ‘You shall con­tin­ue to fight the Jews, and they will fight you, until the Mus­lims will kill them. And the Jew will hide behind the stone and the tree, and the stone and the tree will say, ‘Oh, ser­vant of Allah, Oh, Mus­lim, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him!’ The res­ur­rec­tion will not come before this hap­pens.” (Idem.)

38. Next, the pro­gram reviews an item from FTR#439. Al Taqwa’s Al-Qar­dawi has also been involved with the estab­lish­ment of a mosque in Boston. “The Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tion poised to build the largest mosque in the North­east on a site in Rox­bury has long-stand­ing ties to an Egypt­ian cler­ic who prais­es sui­cide bomb­ings and a Mus­lim activist indict­ed last week in a ter­ror­ism financ­ing probe. The Islam­ic Soci­ety of Boston, which has city approval to build a sprawl­ing $22 mil­lion Islam­ic cul­tur­al cen­ter and mosque on Mal­colm X Boule­vard, has had a long asso­ci­a­tion with Dr. Yusuf Abdul­lah al-Qaradawi, whose vocal sup­port of the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist group Hamas prompt­ed the State Depart­ment to bar him from enter­ing the U.S. four years ago.”
(“Rad­i­cal Islam: Out­spo­ken Cler­ic, Jailed Activist Tied to New Hub Mosque” by Jonathan Wells, Jack Mey­ers, Mag­gie Mul­vi­hill and Kevin Wis­niews­ki; The Boston Her­ald; 10/28/2003.)

39. In addi­tion, Abdu­rah­man Muham­mad Alam­ou­di (anoth­er Al Taqwa asso­ciate) is affil­i­at­ed with this mosque. Past pro­grams exam­ine the infil­tra­tion of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ele­ments and ide­ol­o­gy into the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. (Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Alamoudi—with sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tions to the GOP—appears to have been involved with the estab­lish­ment of an Al Qaeda/Muslim Broth­er­hood Fifth Col­umn with­in the U.S. mil­i­tary. For more infor­ma­tion on this, see “ ‘Count­down with Kei­th Olber­man’ for Oct. 23”; MSNBC News; 10/23/2003.) “The local reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, now head­quar­tered on Prospect Street in Cam­bridge, was found­ed by Abdu­rah­man Muham­mad Alamoudi—a high-pro­file Wash­ing­ton, D.C. activist who has pub­licly sup­port­ed Hamas, Hezbol­lah and oth­er ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions.” (Idem.)

40. Before recount­ing infor­ma­tion about the Broth­er­hood’s Said Ramadan and his activ­i­ties in the Unit­ed States, the pro­gram reviews the links between Ramadan and the Al Taqwa milieu. “In his book Dol­lars for Ter­ror, Richard Labeviere gives us a crit­i­cal pro­file of Said Ramadan. Ramadan mar­ried Wafa Has­san al-Bana and thus became the son-in-law of Has­san al-Bana, the founder of the MB. Ramadan next led a famous brigade of Arab vol­un­teers to fight against Israel in the 1948 war. When Nass­er cracked down on the MB in Egypt in 1954, Ramadan relo­cat­ed first to Sau­di Ara­bia and then to Pak­istan. He then moved to Europe, after get­ting Sau­di back­ing for the prop­a­ga­tion of Islam in Europe in par­tic­u­lar. At first, Ramadan opened a MB-backed Islam­ic cen­ter in Munich, in part in a reflec­tion of the MB’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nazis dat­ing back to the late 1930’s. (Labeviere in this regard also cites Egypt­ian reports that Youssef Nada worked for the Abwehr (Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence) in the 1940’s. It should also be recalled that Fran­cois Genoud, the Swiss Nazi banker, began devel­op­ing con­tacts in the Arab world on behalf of Ger­man intel­li­gence begin­ning in the 1930’s.]”
(“Report on Islamists, The Far Right, and Al Taqwa” by Kevin Coogan; Ora­cle Syn­di­cate; p. 13.)

41. “While in Ger­many, Ramadan defend­ed his doc­tor­al the­sis on Islam­ic law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne. How­ev­er the Saud­is advised Ramadan to make Switzer­land his main base of oper­a­tions and at the height of the Alger­ian war, Ramadan opened up what is now a famous Islam­ic Cen­ter in Eaux-Vives, near Gene­va, in 1961. [It was at this cen­ter that Achmed Huber first con­vert­ed to Islam. –KC] Said Ramadan remained a top Euro­pean leader of the MB until his death in August 1995. This, in effect, means that Nada, Him­mat, Nasred­din, and all the oth­er MB lead­ers asso­ci­at­ed with al-Taqwa, were essen­tial­ly in Ramadan’s orbit. As Labeviere writes, after being con­demned in absen­tia to forced labor for life by the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment, Ramadan first ‘set­tled in Munich, then in Switzer­land, where he man­ages the move­men­t’s fund. [Empha­sis added.]’ ” (Idem.)

42. Kevin Coogan presents the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that the found­ing of Al Taqwa may have been at the insti­ga­tion of Ramadan. (An inter­view with Richard Labeviere pre­sent­ed above rein­forces this con­clu­sion.) One should not fail to note that, in addi­tion to the Wah­habi con­nec­tions of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood milieu pre­sent­ed here, a Huber-Nada-Iran link may well be impor­tant. It appears that the Ramadan/Huber/Al Taqwa milieu has made sig­nif­i­cant inroads in Shia Islam, as well as Sun­ni. “In a May 6, 2002 arti­cle in Le Monde, author Piotr Smo­lar quotes Achmed Huber as say­ing that he first met Youssef Nada only dur­ing the course of a con­fer­ence orga­nized in Iran in 1988. It was here that Nada approached Huber about par­tic­i­pa­tion in the found­ing of al-Taqwa. The rel­a­tive­ly brief time between Huber’s meet­ing Nada and his par­tic­i­pa­tion with al-Taqwa sug­gests that both men may have been oper­at­ing for the same larg­er con­cern, name­ly Ramadan’s MB oper­a­tion in Switzer­land.” (Idem.)

43. “Equal­ly inter­est­ing is that Huber and Nada met in Iran. In the late 1970’s, it has been report­ed that the Saud­is were said to have decid­ed to stop back­ing Ramadan’s Swiss cen­ter and in 1978, they opened their own group (l’As­so­ci­a­tion Cul­turelle Islamique de Gen­eve) because the Sau­di monar­chy dis­agreed with Ramadan’s embrace of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. [It should be recalled that Huber also became one of the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion’s lead­ing West­ern sup­port­ers in the late 1970’s]” (Idem.)

44. The broad­cast con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Said Ramadan’s recruit­ment of an African-Amer­i­can named David Belfield. While liv­ing in the U.S., Ramadan recruit­ed Belfield to become an assas­sin on behalf of the Iran­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist gov­ern­ment in Iran. “Incred­i­bly, in the mid­dle 1970’s Said Ramadan actu­al­ly recruit­ed an Amer­i­can named David Theodore Belfield, who lat­er changed his name to Dawud Salahud­din. Salahud­din was a black Amer­i­can who became rad­i­cal­ized and adopt­ed a mix­ture of Third World­ist rad­i­cal­ism and Mus­lim beliefs. He lat­er served as an assas­sin for the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment and on July 21, 1980, Salahud­din mur­dered Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a for­mer press attaché at the Iran­ian Embassy under the Shah who was liv­ing in Bethes­da, Mary­land, where he helped direct a pro-Shah exile group, the Iran Free­dom Foun­da­tion. After the assas­si­na­tion, Salahud­din first fled to Gene­va and then to Iran. Salahud­din first encoun­tered anti-Shah and pro-Khome­i­ni Iran­ian exiles in Wash­ing­ton. How­ev­er his life real­ly began to change in May 1975, when he met Said Ramadan, who was the guest speak­er at the Islam­ic Cen­ter, a large mosque on Mass­a­chu­setts Avenue. [On Ramadan and Salahud­din, see David Ott­away, ‘The Lone Assas­sin’ pub­lished in the Wash­ing­ton Post mag­a­zine on August 25, 1996 as well as Ira Sil­ver­man, ‘An Amer­i­can Ter­ror­ist’ pub­lished in The New York­er, August 5, 2002.] Salahud­din and Ramadan then lived togeth­er through the sum­mer of 1975 in a house in Wash­ing­ton near Howard Uni­ver­si­ty. Salahud­din to this day describes Ramadan as his advi­sor and spir­i­tu­al guide. There is also strong evi­dence that Ramadan was involved with hook­ing Salahud­din up to the Ira­ni­ans for the assas­si­na­tion of Tabatabai. Once in Iran, Salahud­din told The New York­er that he had exten­sive­ly trav­eled through the Mus­lim world as a kind of diplo­mat for Ramadan and that in 1986 he made ‘cer­tain rep­re­sen­ta­tions on behalf of Ramadan to Mua­mar Qaddafi’ through one of Qaddafi’s cousins and in 1995, he ‘deliv­ered a mes­sage from Ramadan to Pres­i­dent Burhanud­din Rab­bain, in Afghanistan, warn­ing him that the Tal­iban had ties to the CIA.’ ” (Ibid.; pp. 13–14.)

45. The pro­gram con­cludes by not­ing that Al Taqwa’s Achmed Huber con­tin­ues to main­tain good rela­tions with African-Amer­i­can Mus­lims. “The sto­ry of Ramadan and Salahud­din is also remark­able giv­en that (as I doc­u­ment in my arti­cle on Huber now on the web), Huber to this day main­tains close ties to rad­i­cal black Islamist fanat­ics based in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., such as Imam Abdul Alim Musa and Sheikh Mohammed al-Asi, both of whom are asso­ci­at­ed with the pro-Khome­i­ni Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Islam­ic Thought (ICIT). Both man also main­tain good ties to the New Black Pan­ther Par­ty, an orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by the late Khal­lid Moham­mad after he split from the Nation of Islam.” (Ibid.; p. 14.)