Youssef Nada

Personal history

Youssef Nada was born on 17 May 1931 in Alexandria, Egypt. In his late teens, Nada became affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Between 1952–54, Nada was imprisoned with 300,000 Members of the Muslim Brotherhood in a desert-based Egyptian military concentration camp. Many persons imprisoned in this camp were tortured as a result of Gamal Abdel-Nasser's famous campaign against the group. After release, Nada returned to University in Alexandria and began a business with a friend, producing milk.

In the late 1950s, Nada moved to Europe, setting in Austria, and began working with a cheese factory in Graz. In 1961, a close friend of Nada's invited him to Libya where a construction boom was developing. Nada seized on the occasion and started to spend his time between Libya and Austria. In a matter of a few years he became the largest supplier of cement to the North African country. The activity led him to partner with Cementir, the Italian cement maker, to develop in 1965 the world's first floating cement silos, two barges named GI-1 and GD-2 able to store bulk cement and loaded with bagging facilities. Cement soon became his main business along with smaller operations in other commodities ranging from steel to agricultural materials. Nada had tremendous business success in his ventures with Saudi Arabia, Libya and eventually, the Nigerian government.

During the 1960s, the Egyptian government fell back into conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood. Youssef Nada became one of the members wanted by the Egyptians. This led to Nada settling permanently in Europe.

By 2001, the time of the accusations for which he became famous, Nada was a resident of Italy. He lived in Campione, a small Italian 'enclave' adjacent to the Swiss canton of Ticino. The location of Campione made traversal of Swiss territory unavoidable. Enforcement of UN sanctions made legal entanglements with the Swiss government inevitable.

Meeting in Algeria

A 1986 article in London-based Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Nada, along with Ahmed Ben Bella, a former president of Algeria, held a secret meeting at his Switzerland home attended by "major figures in some of the world’s most violent groups." Other attendees the meeting included the "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman and Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a leading Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim scholar.

In an interview on al-Jazeera, Nada himself vehemently denied any such thing to have occurred citing that well-known hatred between the individuals made such a meeting implausible. Nada claimed further that the London-based newspaper which made the allegations had links to Arab governments opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.

"The Project"

In a November 2001 raid on offices and residences associated with Youssef Nada, an untitled document, written in Arabic and dated 1 December 1982, ostensibly outlining a plan to infiltrate and defeat Western countries was found. Later referred to as "The Project" by Swiss-French journalist Sylvain Besson, the content and provenance of the document would become the subject of conflicting media accounts in subsequent years. Though the document contains no mention of the Muslim Brotherhood in its original form, it would be portrayed as a seminal Brotherhood text outlining their plan for Muslims to infiltrate and defeat Western countries.

Nada's rebuttal

Nada claimed that the aforementioned stories were fabrications, made for political purposes. This is a claim at least partly supported by the findings of the Swiss and Italian investigations, which cited that the accusations against him appeared to have political roots.

Beyond this, Nada claims that during the post 2001 investigation period, that numerous western journalists appeared to be acting in the service of various foreign intelligence agencies, i.e., supporting what he felt were false claims against him.

Swiss and Italian investigation, 2001–2005

Although the charges against him were made by the United States, the nature of the UN terror sanctions program made Nada's treatment as a terror suspect international. Therefore, most of the actions taken in his direction were in the hands of Swiss and Italian authorities, due to his residential and business linkages to the two countries.

In November 2001, the Swiss government froze 24 bank accounts associated with Nada, and the Swiss federal prosecutor's office, led by Claude Nicati, began an aggressive inquiry into the activities of Nada and Taqwa co-director Ali Ghaleb Himmat. Both men repeatedly denied any connection with Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.

Ultimately the Federal Court in Bellinzona dropped the charges, for lack of evidence.

Swiss and Italy drop investigation, ask UN to remove his terror-listing

On 1 June 2005, the Swiss case was dropped due to lack of evidence. The Prosecutor was admonished by the Court for opening a file on Nada without any specific reason. The Italian case was closed in 2007, after a lengthy investigation whereby the Prosecutor stated that the grounds for opening the case appeared to be more political and agenda-driven rather than judicial or evidence based. Italian premier newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on this.

Both the Swiss and Italian governments petitioned the Committee of the United Nations in-charge of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 terror blacklist.

In 2009, Nada was removed from the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 terror blacklist (UNSC 1267).

Tried in absentia in Egyptian military trial

In January and February 2007, Egypt announced it had frozen the assets of dozens of top Muslim Brotherhood figures, warning that at least 40 persons were to stand trial in Egypt's military court. The Associated Press notes this court is "known for its swift trials and no right of appeal."

In April 2008, an Egyptian military tribunal sentenced Nada in absentia to ten years' imprisonment for providing financial support to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In his 2008 filings at the European Court of Human Rights, Nada claims he had not been informed of the proceedings against him and that he had therefore never had the possibility of defending himself in person nor of sending a lawyer to represent him. Nada noted that the trial was held before a military tribunal even though he was a civilian, and therefore called the proceedings into question as being an unfair trial.

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe defense

The case of Nada, which was presented to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, was presented as being "like a page out of Kafka". Investigations of the Nada case, and the injustices suffered by Nada, who has never been proven to have any links to Al Qaeda, nor the Taliban, were the focal point of a two-year PACE human rights investigation. During this investigation, the UN SC 1276, and other UN terror-blacklisting programs, came under harsh scrutiny and criticism.

The PACE concluded that then (and still current) terror blacklisting procedures were unworthy of the UN and EU. Criticisms were levied stating that these kind of injustices did not help to fight terrorism, but to promote popular frustrations by persecuting persons without justice and transparency. A series of reports came-forth from the meeting.

In 2010, the PACE wrote letter to the President of the Court of Human Rights, requesting that they be able to provide third-party submissions in support of Nada's case against Switzerland.

European Court of Human Rights ruling

On 12 September 2012, the European Court of Human Rights decided that Switzerland had violated various Articles of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, aka "The Convention". The court ruled that Switzerland violated Nada's human rights by restricting his cross-border movements after the United States put Nada on a blacklist on suspicions of financing terrorism.

The United States had accused Nada of helping finance the 9/11 terrorist attacks, placing him on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 terror blacklist, a sanctions list for persons associated with Al Quaeda and the Taliban. The United States refused to provide evidence to support the accusation, claiming the information was classified. Still, the terror-blacklisting left Nada in a position of being treated as a criminal, without trial, nor with any means of appeal.

The Strasbourg court ruled that "Switzerland should have taken all possible measures, within the latitude available to it, to adapt the sanctions regime to the applicant's individual situation". Switzerland was ordered to pay Nada €30,000 to cover his costs and expenses.

The decision was seminal, as it made clear that the Convention was required to be upheld, in relation to persons subject to UN terror-blacklisting, under UN SC 1267.

UN terror blacklistings have come under sharp criticism, notably by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.