Ahmed Huber (1927 – 15 May 2008) was a Swiss German journalist, and a convert to Islam, who was active in both Islamist and Far Right politics. He gained international notoriety in 2001 when he was accused by the United States government of funding Al Qaeda's terrorist activities through the Al Taqwa Bank, of which he was one of five managers.
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Albert Friedrich Armand Huber was born in the Canton of Fribourg, Switzerland in 1927 into a Protestant family. He joined the liberal Social Democratic Party of Switzerland in 1952, and remained a member until 1994, when he was expelled for his Right-wing political beliefs. Throughout his life, he worked as a journalist for various Swiss news services until 1989, when he lost his position as a result of advocating Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie. In 1959, the Party asked Huber to hide some Algerians at his home, who were illegally transporting weapons through Switzerland which were to be delivered to the rebels fighting against French colonialism in the Algerian War. During the time they stayed with Huber, they discussed Islam, and Huber, who had never taken his Protestant background seriously, was very impressed by their beliefs. He continued to contemplate Islam until 1962, when he finally became a Sunni Muslim by reciting the shahada at a Swiss Islamic center. He was then invited to visit Egypt, where he was told that the Swiss Islamic center was hostile to then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and that he should again recite the shahada at the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, which he did. It was at this time that he adopted the name Ahmed Huber.
Huber was able to meet with President Nasser during his time in Egypt. It was through his talks with Nasser, who spoke positively about German National Socialism, that Huber first began to reconsider his beliefs about Nazism and Hitler. Upon his return to Switzerland, he met a young secretary at the Egyptian embassy whom he married in 1963, and with whom he fathered two children.
Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, Huber continued to become increasingly sympathetic to both Arab nationalism and Nazism. His views were strongly influenced by his meeting in 1965 with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who had made efforts to win support for the Third Reich among Muslims during the Second World War; as well as Johann von Leers, originally a Nazi propagandist who fled to Egypt after the war (he also became a Muslim), where he continued to produce anti-Semitic propaganda for Nasser's government. Huber also claimed to have met Hitler's secretaries, Traudl Junge and Christa Schroeder; Artur Axmann, who had been a leader of the Hitler Youth; as well as several former SS officers, including Léon Degrelle. Huber also kept many Nazi relics at his home, including a fragment from Hitler's destroyed residence at Berchtesgaden. Huber was less forthcoming about his contacts among the contemporary Far Right, although it was reported that he knew Dr. William Pierce, who was the leader of the American neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance. He is also known to have been a friend of François Genoud, a Swiss financier who was active in protecting fugitive Nazis, as well as supporting various Palestinian and Islamist causes. In 1988, Genoud would become one of the founders of Al Taqwa, along with Huber.
Huber did not give up his associations with the Swiss left, however. In the late 1960s, he worked within a group known as the "Bern Nonconformists," which was a Swiss New Left organization. He used their Leftist rhetoric to advocate anti-American and anti-Israeli positions. Given Huber's actual beliefs, this activity is an example of entryism.
Huber remained an Arab nationalist until the Islamic Iranian Revolution in 1979. Huber was very interested in the idea of an Islamic government, and he began to study the writings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Huber visited Iran in 1983, during which he spoke before the Iranian Parliament. He continued to make annual trips to Iran every year thereafter, and met several times with Khomeini. The Iranians hoped that Huber would use his Right-wing contacts in Europe to foster closer ties between Iran and the European Right. Although Huber was a Sunni, he advocated the Shi'a revolution in Iran as a model which could be an inspiration to all Muslim nations.
Beginning in the 1980s, Huber attended many Islamic conferences and meetings of the Far Right around the world, including in Iran, Lebanon, the United States, France, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. At these meetings he would promote the idea of greater cooperation between Muslims and the Right. Huber particularly advocated the school of thought known as the European New Right, which he believed provided the best basis for such an alliance. In spite of these activities, nothing concrete is known to have come of them.
Huber also worked closely with the Avalon Gemeinschaft, a Swiss pagan, self-styled New Right organization which has hosted several conferences on Holocaust denial, and counts former Waffen SS veterans among its members.
Huber died at his home in Muri bei Bern in 2008.
Huber was one of five individuals who founded the Al Taqwa Bank in Lugano in 1988, although it was based in the Bahamas for tax purposes. Several of the other individuals involved were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. As early as 1996, it was claimed that Al Taqwa handled finances for individuals linked to Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, as well as Islamist groups in several other countries.
On 23 September 2001, President George W. Bush announced that Al Taqwa had assisted Al Qaeda in moving funds around the world, and its assets were frozen. This resulted in the Swiss authorities raiding the Al Taqwa offices in December 2001. Huber himself was named by the U.S. government on 7 November 2001 as an individual with links to Al Qaeda. Huber did profess admiration for Osama bin Laden, and had admitted to meeting with bin Laden sympathizers in Lebanon before the September 11 attacks, but he rejected the notion that either himself or Al Taqwa had any direct involvement with Al Qaeda. Despite an investigation of Huber by the Swiss government, no evidence was ever produced which proved his involvement with the organization. As the U.S. government never provided the Swiss with any evidence of its own against Huber, no criminal charges were ever filed against him, although he was restricted from traveling abroad in May 2002, and this ban remained in place for the remainder of his life. Huber always maintained that the U.S. accusations were lies, and that Al Taqwa was only involved with various Muslim charities.
Huber told author George Michael that he believed the September 11 attacks were the result of a joint effort carried out by Muslims and American extremists working together. He said that, prior to 2001, he had talked to Rightists and Muslims in the U.S. who told him that a plan, similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor, was being prepared by them which would serve to "wake up the American people" to the Zionist domination of America. Huber further said that his American contacts had afterwards claimed responsibility for September 11 in telephone conversations with him, and that this attack was intended to lead the U.S. into "difficult days" which would result in a weakening of the United States, and would eventually bring about a Far Right revolution there.
Huber said that what attracted him to Islam was its anti-theological basis, as Allah is beyond all categories of reason. He liked the fact that Islam describes a direct relationship between Allah and the individual, rather than it being mediated by a church, priest or other authority. He also said that the Muslim belief in the unity of religion, politics and society was another aspect with which he agreed. Huber believed that the doctrines of National Socialism, which he called anti-modern, were entirely compatible with the principles of Islam. He pointed out that both Islam and National Socialism oppose usury, homosexuality and degenerate art. He also referred to the fact that Hitler himself had praised Islam, particularly in comparison to Christianity, in his private conversations. Huber regarded Hitler as an anti-colonialist, in that Hitler fought against all the great colonial powers of his day. He also believed that the Nazis' advocacy of deep ecology was equivalent to the Muslim belief that nature must be respected as an expression of Allah.
In 1982, Huber wrote an essay entitled "The Unknown Islam," in which he identified the three principal threats to Islam as being Zionism, Marxism and the spread of the American way of life.
In spite of his Nazi sympathies, Huber always denied being an anti-Semite, claiming that he was only opposed to Zionism. He frequently professed his belief in the importance of Holocaust denial, and supported several deniers throughout his life. He also believed that anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism were merging due to the strength of Zionist power in the U.S.
Huber also differed from most European Right-wing extremists in that he welcomed immigration into Europe from Muslim countries. Although he believed that the refusal of Muslim immigrants to integrate into European society was initially harmful to Europe, he believed that younger Muslims were producing a new form of "European Islam," which was a synthesis of the two cultures, and that this could be beneficial for both Europeans and Muslims.
Huber believed that the U.S.-led Iraq War was doing a great service to his cause, as it was strengthening and bringing Islamists, Arab nationalists and the European New Right together against a common foe.
Huber's advocacy of National Socialism alongside typically left-wing viewpoints, such as his support for Third World anti-imperialist movements and socialism, classify him as a Strasserist.
Huber has been described as being unique for attempting to reconcile his Nazi and Muslim beliefs, although he was certainly not alone in this. Johann von Leers, Aribert Heim and David Myatt are all examples of people who regarded themselves as being both Muslims and Nazis, and saw no contradiction between the two.
   | Shareholders in the Bank of Terror? - Shareholders in the Bank of Terror? - Salon.com |
| | TRANS-NATIONAL HATE: - Join Simon Wiesenthal Center in its fight against anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and defending the safety of Jews worldwide. | Simon Wiesenthal Center |
| | article on Huber - JTA - Jewish & Israel News |
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