Ahmed Huber

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Ahmed Huber (1986)

Ahmed Huber (born March 25, 1927 as Albert Friedrich Armand Huber in the canton of Friborg ; † May 15, 2008 in Muri near Bern ) was a Swiss bank manager and journalist who had converted to Islam . German, Swiss and American authorities described him as a right-wing extremist and as a "link between the global revisionist scene and Islamist- motivated anti-Semites ".

Life

Ahmed Huber was born as Albert Friedrich Armand Huber into a Protestant home. In the late 1950s he was active in the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland and first came into contact with Islam through its support for the Algerian independence movement . After studying Islamic teachings in a center of the Muslim Brotherhood in Geneva , he traveled to Egypt on the advice of the then Egyptian ambassador to Switzerland, Fathi al-Dhib, and officially converted to Islam there in 1962. From now on he called himself Ahmad Abdallah Ramadan al-Swissri. He was now a Sunni Muslim and turned to Mecca on the prayer rug in the Bern parliament building .

Acquaintance with Nazis and Islamists

In Egypt he made the acquaintance of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini , Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Nazi collaborator and SS member , about whom Huber spoke positively in an interview in 1965, and Johann von Leers , one of the most radical anti-Semitic publicists in the Nazi German Reich who converted to Islam under the name of Omar Amin von Leers and played a leading role as a propagandist for Gamal Abdel Nasser . After his return to Switzerland, Huber became a confidante of the lawyer and banker François Genoud , a Nazi sympathizer. In the 1970s and 1980s, Huber intensified his contacts with right-wing radicals and Islamists, especially the Shiite regime of Ruhollah Khomeini . After he had demonstrated to the journalists Jürg Frischknecht and Fredi Lerch about his previously unknown connections to neo-Nazi circles, Huber was expelled from the Social Democratic Party in 1994.

Until 1981, Ahmed Huber worked full-time as the Bundeshaus editor for the Swiss service of the Deutscher Depeschendienst news agency in Bern, initially under the editor-in-chief Wolfgang Wissensemich , then under the editor-in-chief Urs C. Grassi. Huber later worked for the Ringier publishing house , a. a. for the week under Frank A. Meyer .

Swiss Al Taqwa Bank Affair

At the same time, Huber was involved in setting up the Al Taqwa Bank (“God's Fear”) in Lugano , Switzerland , and became one of five members of its management committee. Investors in the bank were u. a. Members of the Kuwaiti royal family, the Bin Laden family and Qatar- based cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi . In November 2001, the financial group's assets were frozen on the instructions of US President George W. Bush , as American authorities accused Al Taqwa of providing financial support to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda . Huber denied this, but had to admit that he had met several times with Bin Laden supporters in Beirut . The investigation into Al Taqwa ended in May 2005. The legal successor of Al Taqwa was the Swiss Nada Management Corporation, on whose board of directors Huber sat. In 2006 the Swiss Federal Prosecutor blocked all of the company's bank accounts and searched its offices.

Extreme right-wing activities

Since 1989, Huber has also been working on closer cooperation between right-wing extremists and Islamists against Israel and the United States ("Jew-nited States of America," Huber said in an interview with CNN ). In the United States, for example, he was a speaker at the Nation of Islam , and at the 2000 European Congress of Young National Democrats he spoke on the subject of “Islam and the New Rights ”. A conference in Beirut planned for March 2001 under the title " Revisionism and Zionism " was banned by the Lebanese government.

Huber has also been mentioned as a history revisionist for years . In England, he participated in the Holocaust denier David Irving events organized in part, in 1996 he said in an interview with the South African Muslim Radio 786 from the " Holocaust hoax ", and in October 2002 he was a speaker at one of neo-Nazis organized demonstration against the Wehrmacht exhibition in Munich, whose motto was: "Against the historical lies of political ideologues - For the honor of our armed forces".

International reactions

Since November 2001, Huber was the only Swiss citizen on the list of organizations and persons suspected of terrorism by the US Department of State and a list of the United States Department of the Treasury that legalized the blocking of their property and remittance transactions. Huber has also been on the UN Security Council's terrorism lists since November 2001. Since May 2002, Huber has also been subject to restrictive measures in the European Community . Switzerland also implemented the UN sanctions.

Due to the so-called travel ban of the UN Security Council Committee , according to which the UN member states were obliged to refuse entry to the listed persons and institutions, Huber had to "expect to be sent home at border controls abroad," said Roland E. Vock from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). Huber himself confirmed in 2007 that he could not go to the USA, Canada, England or the Caribbean. When asked whether he wanted to be removed from the list, Huber replied that he considered it “an honor” to be on the list of “rulers” who “cover the world with threats, aggression and neocolonialism”.

Last years

Huber, who was married to an Egyptian woman and was seen as friendly and charming in private, lived on a modest pension in his house in Muri after he was unable to inherit his brother Peter, who was also a journalist, due to suspicion of terrorism. The father of two sons and passionate collector of pictures and Nazi devotional objects died there on May 15, 2008, suffering from ailing for a long time, due to age.

literature

  • Kevin Coogan: The Mysterious Achmed Huber: Friend to Hitler, Allah… and Ibn Laden? In: Hit List. Volume 3, April / May 2002, pp. 120-125.
  • Thomas Greven, Thomas Grumke (Ed.): Globalized right-wing extremism? The extremist right in the era of globalization. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-14514-3 .
  • George Michael: The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 2006, ISBN 0-7006-1444-3 .
  • Ulrich Stern: The role of anti-Semitism in the transatlantic network of the new right-wing extremism and its connections to Islamist extremists. Diploma thesis Free University, Berlin 2003.
  • Juliane Wetzel : Huber, Ahmed , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/1, 2009, pp. 382f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quotation: Brandenburg Constitutional Protection (ed.): The image of the enemy connects: right-wing extremists and Islamists . Report v. March 14, 2006, p. 3; s. a. Federal Ministry of the Interior (ed.): Verfassungsschutzbericht 2002 . Berlin 2003, p. 102; Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (ed.): The importance of anti-Semitism in current German right-wing extremism . Cologne 2002, p. 24.
  2. ^ Coogan 2002.
  3. ↑ Mark Weizmann: Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial: Permanent Elements of Global Right-Wing Extremism. In: Greven / Grumke 2006, pp. 52–69, here: pp. 60 f .; Coogan 2002.
  4. ↑ Urs Paul Engeler : Ahmed Huber (1927–2008). In: Weltwoche . Issue 22, 2008 (obituary).
  5. ↑ Weizmann 2006, p. 61; Michael 2006, p. 115; Coogan 2002.
  6. ↑ Jürg Frischknecht: Alliance between the crescent moon and the swastika. In: WoZ . August 27, 1993; Peter Niggli, Jürg Frischknecht: Right rope teams. How the "creepy patriots" mastered the collapse of communism. Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 1998, p. 692 ff.
  7. ↑ Jay Bushinsky: Swiss probe anti-US neo-Nazi. ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: San Francisco Chronicle . March 12, 2002, pp. A-12; Michael 2006, p. 151; Coogan 2002. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sfgate.com
  8. ↑ Weizmann 2006, p. 61; Michael Whine: An unholy alliance. International links between right-wing extremism and Islamism. In: Greven / Grumke 2006, pp. 181–202, here: p. 181.
  9. ^ Protection of the Constitution Brandenburg 2006, p. 3; Michael 2006, p. 149 f .; Bin Laden Millions: New Strike Against the Network. In: Spiegel Online . November 9, 2001.
  10. ^ Paul Eschenhagen: Anti-Semitism as a connecting element between right-wing extremists and radical Muslims . Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz 2003, p. 11; Bushinsky 2002; Coogan 2002.
  11. ^ Constitutional Protection Brandenburg 2006, p. 3.
  12. ↑ Links Between American, European Terrorist Groups. In: CNN.com. Aired March 5, 2002.
  13. ↑ Whine 2006, p. 181; Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution 2002, p. 24; Eschenhagen 2003, p. 15; Tobias Kaufmann: Coalition of Evil. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . August 23, 2007; Protection of the Constitution Brandenburg 2006, p. 4.
  14. ↑ Whine 2006, p. 181; Milton Shain: from victim to beneficiary? The South African Jews and Racial Policy. In: Irmtrud Wojak, Susanne Meinl (ed.): Limitless prejudices. Frankfurt / New York 2002, p. 164 A39; Federal Ministry of the Interior 2003, p. 102.
  15. ↑ s. State Dept. Updates List of Terrorist Individuals and Groups ( Memento June 30, 2004 in the Internet Archive ). October 15, 2002; US Department of the Treasury. Office of Foreign Assets Control: Terrorism. What You Need to Know about US Sanctions ( Memento June 28, 2006 in the Internet Archive ). Washington, January 10, 2008, pp. 3, 103 (PDF; 1 MB).
  16. ^ The Consolidated List of The United Nations Security Council's Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee ( Memento of March 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). As of January 16, 2008; about this: Dick Marty's latest case takes place in New York. Investigation into terrorism lists of the UN Security Council. In: NZZ . August 22, 2007, p. 13.
  17. ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 881/2002 of the Council of May 27, 2002, last amended by Regulation (EC) No. 400/2008 from May 5, 2008 ( memento of August 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive ). S. 53, 73 (PDF; 728 kB).
  18. ↑ Ordinance of October 2, 2000 on measures against persons and organizations with connections to Usama bin Laden, the group "Al-Qaida" or the Taliban; Appendix 2 ( Memento of August 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). Consolidated version v. April 25, 2008, p. 58 (PDF; 410 kB).
  19. ↑ Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1267 (1999) concerning Al-Qaida and the Taliban and Associated Individuals and Entities
  20. ↑ a b Stefan von Bergen: The villain on the blacklist. In: espace.ch . August 31, 2007.
  21. ↑ Markus Dütschler: Unbelievably friendly - and eerie. In: The Bund . May 27, 2008, p. 24; Beni Frenkel: Huber's Chumasch ( Memento from October 31, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). In: kolumnen.de. May 25, 2004.
personal data
SURNAME Huber, Ahmed
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huber, Albert Friedrich Armand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss bank manager and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Canton of Friborg
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 2008
Place of death Muri near Bern