cross posted at DailyKos

This is a story about a network. It’s a naughty network. It’s one of the most important networks of banks and financial institutions on the planet. You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s the al-Taqwa network, the web of Switzerland and Bahamas-based banks that comprise the financial arm of the
international wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. And what’s the Muslim Brotherhood? The Muslim Brotherhood is merely the leading network of Sunni Islamists dedicated to the propagation of various forms of theocratic Islam. And so, with the Muslim Brotherhood being at the heart of so many of the social movements that we’ve vowed to defeat in our global “War on Terror”, and with its rather extensive ties to al-Qaeda (it’s hard to say where one begins and the other ends), it’s easy to imagine why the story behind Bank al-Taqwa is rather important. Perhaps even very important.
So let’s get this ball-o-bizarre history rolling and start learning about the al-Taqwa network with an excellent March 2002 article from the San Francisco Chronicle (and an egregious number of comments):

From the San Francisco Chronicle

Swiss probe anti-U.S. neo-Nazi
Suspected financial ties to al Qaeda

Jay Bushinsky, Chronicle Foreign Service

Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Bern, Switzerland — At the behest of President Bush, Swiss law authorities are investigating an alliance between Islamic militants and European neo-Nazis who have allegedly been providing financial support to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.

Experts say Islamic militants and far-right movements — a coalition they call the Third Position — share common hatreds: the United States and Jews.

…

Egads!  Neo-Nazis supporting Islamist militants! Actually, as we’ll see they aren’t really Neo­-Nazis in many cases. They’re just the same ol’ swastika-saluting fascist movement, gone underground.

Continuing…

…

“Extremists manage to find ways to put aside their differences and find common cause,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said recently.

The central figure in the probe is Ahmed Huber, a 74-year-old Swiss convert to Islam who says the “Zionist Israel lobby controls the U.S. government and mass media and shapes U.S. policy.“

…

Jews control the media, you see, which explains why there have been so few articles in the US media on the very real historical Islamist/International fascist (including Nazis) connection.

President Bush enjoys talking about the “Islamic fascists“, although he is less keen about discussing the many “Islamic fascists” connections of his own. We will be discussing those in great detail in this series of essays.

Continuing…

…

Nada Management, the Bern company Huber helps direct, has been singled out publicly by President Bush.

Huber, a gregarious and outspoken former journalist who spent three decades covering the Swiss Parliament for a socialist newspaper, is a strong supporter of Germany’s neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) and such extreme-right politicians as France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Huber serves on the board of directors of Nada Management. Founded by a Swiss Nazi and formerly known as al Taqwa Bank, the consulting and management firm is part of the international al Taqwa group, which the United States believes has long acted as a financial adviser to al Qaeda.

…

Just think of the al-Taqwa network as the Charles Schwab for militant Jihadists, but instead of “Chuck”, your friendly financial expert that wants you to buy a no-load S&P500 index fund, you instead get “Ahmed”, the neo-Nazi convert to militant Islam who admires Hitler, the Ayatollah Khomeini (the whole Sunni-Shia gets murky once we delve into these things), really really really hates Jews, and thinks you should consider investing in a nice Jihad in one of their many attractive locales (Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, North Africa, and South East Asia, to name a few examples). And as an added incentive, he’ll throw in a free copy of Mein Kompf.

Continuing…

…

“Al Taqwa is an association of offshore banks and financial management firms that have helped al Qaeda shift money around the world,” Bush said on Nov. 7. The U.S. government has frozen Huber’s assets and is pressuring the Swiss government to arrest him for his alleged role in the al Qaeda money network.

Swiss investigators say Huber’s travels on the Muslim lecture circuit in Western Europe and North America brought him into contact with bin Laden’s followers. Huber has admitted to meeting with associates of the Saudi exile, describing them as “discreet, well-educated, very intelligent people.” But he denies that Nada Management underwrites al Qaeda activities.

During an interview in his study, lined with books and portraits and photographs of Adolf Hitler, Richard Wagner, Ayatollah Khomeini, Haj Amin al- Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) and Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Huber expressed his views to a Chronicle correspondent.

“The U.S. is the ally of 15 million Jews against 1.3 billion Muslims; it is allied with 5 million Israelis against 200 million Arabs,” he said. “We will bring down the Israel lobby and change foreign policy. We’ll do it in America. When it happens, you’ll understand.”

Huber minimizes his role on Nada Management’s board of directors, saying he is a minor player who receives only $1,500 annually in compensation. He says the company’s sponsors are mostly wealthy Muslims from Malaysia and the Persian Gulf states who specialize in projects “beneficial to Third World countries — like new roads, clinics, agricultural development.”

But Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer, a spokesman for the Swiss attorney general, disagrees. His office has been investigating Nada Management’s activities in Switzerland, Germany and the United States for the past six months.

“There have been indications that al Taqwa could have been financing al Qaeda,” he said. “Since Sept. 11, we have been seeking criminal connections. We had been on their trail before but did not have enough evidence to open criminal proceedings. This has changed.“

…

Yeah, too bad it changed back. Flash forward a few years and you’ll see how this line of 9/11 investigating by our government just sort of died. Keep reading to see why.

Continuing…

…

Wiedmer says the data he has gathered have been made available to U.S. authorities, but he specified that if charges are eventually filed, the “culprits” will be tried in a Swiss court.

Three other Nada Management board members have also been questioned by Swiss, Italian and U.S. authorities: Youssef Nada, an Egyptian expatriate who has Italian citizenship; Ali Himmat, a Syrian national; and Mohamed Mansour, a Zurich resident.

Nada lives in Campione d’Italia, a tiny Italian enclave and tax haven near the southern Swiss city of Lugano. Three months ago, Campione police raided Nada Management’s local office and confiscated records and documents.

…

Oooo…this Youssef Nada fellow sounds like a great chance to play “four-degrees of separation from the Bush family”. Ok, let’s see…Youssef Nada(1) is a former business associate of Jamal Barzinji(2), who helped found Nada International back in 1976. Barzinji is also, president of the Safa Trust and Vice President of the Institute for Islamic Thought(IIT). Both of these Barzinji-backed Institutions are closely connected with and helped fund the Islamic Institute back in 1999, which was started by none other than Grover Norquist(3)*, one of the leaders of the modern Conservative Movement and a Field Marshall for President Bush’s(4) agenda. Yay!! *Alternatively, we could have taken the path of “the Islamic Institute’s Chairman, Talat Othman(3) is a long-time Bush family friend and served on the board of Harken Energy.”

Continuing…

…

The Nada Management board is assisted by a committee of Muslim scholars headed by Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian linked to his country’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The committee’s purpose is to make sure Nada conforms to Islamic doctrine such as a ban on interest rates.

Huber’s longtime Swiss nemesis is Jean-Claude Buhrer, a correspondent for the prominent French daily Le Monde. Buhrer recently cited a column published in Morgenstern, a newspaper read by surviving former members of Germany’s wartime Waffen SS, in which Huber said Muslims and Nazis were involved in the same fight.

“This is tantamount to a marriage between the swastika and the (Islamic) crescent,” wrote Buhrer.

Buhrer also assailed Huber for denying the scope of the Nazi Holocaust and for being a faithful disciple of Francois Genoud, a Swiss lawyer who funded Hitler and served as a German agent during World War II.
…

A Francois Genoud fun-fact: He holds the copyright to the writings of Hitler, Goebbels, and Martin Bormann.

And finishing our look at the San Francisco Chronicle article…

…

After the war, Genoud underwrote the clandestine Odessa organization, which, according to famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, enabled such notorious Nazi fugitives as Adolf Eichmann, Alois Brunner and Klaus Barbie to escape to South America and the Middle East.

Authorities believe Genoud founded al Taqwa Bank and allocated its resources to support international terrorists such as Vladimir Ilich Ramirez, alias Carlos the Jackal, and bin Laden.

Genoud committed suicide in 1996, shortly after Jewish leaders and Swiss banking officials announced an unprecedented agreement to set up a commission to examine secret bank and government files to search for funds deposited in Switzerland by Holocaust victims, according to Buhrer.

Over the years, Genoud paid French attorney Jacques Verges to defend Ramirez and Barbie and also covered the legal expenses of Eichmann before an Israeli court in 1961. He also subsidized Khomeini’s prolonged exile in France when Iran was governed by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Genoud’s admiration for Khomeini is shared by Huber. “‘He was a fantastic man,” Huber said.

Ok, get this: So Genoud paid French attorney Jacques Verges to defend Carlos “the Jackal” Ramirez, right? Verge’s protégé is Isabelle Coutant-Peyre. Coutant-Peyre is actually engaged to “the Jackal” AND was a lawyer for Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker”. It’s a small shadow Nazi-fascist-Islamist world, ain’t it?

Is your interest piqued yet? Good! Keep reading! It’s important! It’s important because this series of essays isn’t just about al-Taqwa Network. And it’s not going to be just about 9/11. This series of essays is going to cover the tangled topic of the intertwined history surrounding 9/11: The Muslim Brotherhood and its many splinter groups, the post-WWII fascist underground, the evolution of covert proxy wars, how that has become a template for the modern trend of privatized warfare, and much more. We’re just going to start off taking a look at the al-Taqwa network because it’s a kind of financial nexus where many different figures and money-trails meet. If you can avoid looking away from this historic train wreck you’ll learn a lot.

So let’s move on to the next topic. We’re going to take a “follow the money” approach and move on to an “also follow the minions of the money men, their larger support networks, and their ideologies and apparent goals” perspective. Such an approach leads to some strange places. Strange, relatively unknown, and vitally important places. If you told yourself that you had time this year to read only one series of zany rants, you have just found that series! So keep reading and enjoy…while you still can. Seriously, this country is in deep trouble.