Читать книгу Inside the Muslim Brotherhood - The Truth About The World's Most Powerful Political Movement - Youssef Nada - Страница 18

‘The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.’

Shakespeare, Othello

Throughout his university career, other than that time rudely interrupted by his imprisonment, Youssef Nada ran a dairy business with an export office. By the time he graduated from the Agriculture College of the University of Alexandria in 1959, he was hugely successful, but filled with disquiet. He says he felt he was living in a police state.

The regime employed hundreds of Stasi-style spies. ‘Everyone was guilty until proved innocent, not innocent till proved guilty,’ said Nada. ‘Everyone was under suspicion. It was a chilling and claustrophobic environment in which to live.’

His dairy complex supplied one-third of the milk drunk each day in his home city. He also supplied a Swiss company pasteurising milk in Egypt and he was contracted by an Austrian company to produce a white cheese, what we now call feta cheese, for export. It helped him make a critical decision – that contract was to be Nada’s passport to a new but even more tumultuous life. He had played everything quietly when he left prison. Yet, censorship and control dominated everybody: ‘I couldn’t bear the way they were running our lives. We were all the pawns of a dictator.’

Nada was under constant surveillance by Nasser’s so-called Intelligence Service and at one point the authorities tried to involve him in a conspiracy. They took him in for questioning and interrogated him.

‘What car are you driving?’

‘A small Ford.’

‘No, you drive a blue Chevrolet.’

‘No.’

‘Do you know a lady called Fathia Barakat?’

‘No.’

‘Write a list of the officers you know.’

Before going to the university some of Nada’s friends went to military academy or the air force. He wrote down six names.

‘No. That is not enough.’

‘I don’t remember any more.’

‘You have to remember. You know but won’t say.’

‘No.’

‘Okay. We’ll give you a chance. Go home and come back tomorrow. Think more – if you don’t you know what will happen! Think where you were before. You know where you have been, and you know where you will go again.’

Nada went home feeling really depressed and thinking that a catastrophe was coming. ‘Then a man called asking for my younger brother, Sobhi,’ said Nada. ‘When Sobhi completed his engineering studies he went on to the Air Force Academy. He was well connected to the regime and had flown major government officials, including Nasser’s second-in- command.

‘The caller said he was Alae Barakat. The security people had asked me about a woman called Barakat. The caller was a pilot colleague of my brother. His mother was Fathia Barakat and her son and my brother had been in her blue car. They’d been followed back to our house where my brother was staying while on leave. Then I immediately understood: they were being monitored and the spies thought it was me who had the military and air force contacts and I must be plotting a coup d’état! I called the security: “The foolish man who you sent to follow me mixed me up with my brother. My brother is an officer and he has contacts everywhere. They’re not my contacts.”

‘Then they went after for me because I did not vote in the presidential referendum. Nasser was the only candidate and you had to say “Yes” or “No”. To say no was a problem. I didn’t want to accept to say yes. What could I do? I simply didn’t go. After two weeks they called me. They said: “Why didn’t you go to the poll?”

‘I said I was very busy and I had no time to go. They said: “You either accept the regime, or you are against it – not to vote means you won’t admit what you think.” What could anyone do? There was no way for me to live in that atmosphere of suspicion and hate. Some people were obliged to. I knew that I could leave for a better life. I wanted to be a citizen with rights. I decided to emigrate. I was not married. I could still have contact with my sisters and brothers. My father was at home and they were living well. They didn’t need me, and I knew how to look after myself. I had contacts everywhere.’

With his contract to produce feta cheese for export, Nada applied for an exit visa which was granted. His dairy machines went to Haj Abbas Al-Sissi, who had a cheese factory in Rashid. He left Egypt in1960 with full government permission on a work permit and a visa. And a remarkable metamorphosis began.

Youssef Nada became an internationalist and an industrialist of high merit. He set up offices in Vienna, Tripoli, Riyadh, Glasgow and Liechtenstein, and commuted between Europe and the Middle East as he worked on business arrangements throughout the Middle East and Africa. With electrifying energy he developed as many businesses as he had those famous contacts. He moved commodities like a carousel: corn, oil, barley, iron, wheat and cement, flour, copper, and aluminium and fertilisers. His trade in cement and accompanying construction materials were the most profitable of all.

Such was the level of his enterprises that his discussions involved the leaders of nations and businesses. He’s always enjoyed an instinct for finding the true decision makers in industry and politics – and all were told of his membership and pride in the Muslim Brotherhood. Among them were President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia and independent Libya’s canny King Idris Al-Sanoosi who had remained allied with the British and the Americans. Both countries were involved in the establishment of his kingdom after World War Two despite the Suez Canal crisis in 1956. The king’s international relations upset Arab nationalists like Nasser.

In 1962, Youssef Nada met and became friendly with King Idris through Fathy Alkhoja his Chief of Ceremony who the young businessman recognised as an honest and devoted Muslim. The young Nada told him of his incarceration and treatment in Egypt. He also had contact with officials like Dr Mahmoud Abu-Saud an international economist and Brotherhood member who was with him in the Nasser military concentration camp in 1954. King Idris appointed Dr Abu-Saud to be financial adviser to the Libyan Central Bank as well as the Ministry of Economy. In Tripoli, Saad Al-Jazairi the grandson of Prince Abd El-Qadir Al-Jazairi was also a close friend.

However, it was the powerful President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia who gave Nada the precious freedom of movement: he gifted him with Tunisian nationality and with it came the passport which opened world travel for him. And in Libya he had high-level support from the king.

Youssef Nada could handle the complexities of high commerce. Domestic issues were another matter. A bachelor, he was living between homes in Vienna and Tripoli in between visits to Saudi Arabia where he preferred not to spend too much time. Haroon Almujadidi visited him in Libya and spent about one year in his house. His father, Sadek Pasha Almujadidi, came to Nada’s house several times when he visited King Idris, as they were very close friends, and with him came his daughter, Tahra Almujadidi.

‘When she came I was overloaded with work and she treated me as if she was my mother.’ recalled Nada. ‘All the pots and pans and utensils for the kitchen were still in boxes. I had no time for domestic matters. She got an Italian couple to look after me and they stayed with me in Tripoli and Vienna and Campione until they retired. I spent my time with work and following my religion. This turned out to be a watershed in my life.’

The construction business was a goldmine in Libya, the Gulf, Nigeria and East, West and North Africa. Youssef Nada’s companies became the chief supplier of cement. In collaboration with the biggest Italian cement company, Cementir, he developed the world’s first floating cement terminal in Cantieri, the biggest Italian shipyard at that time. He became known across Europe and the Middle East as ‘The King of Cement’.

Nada had his own business fiefdom in Libya. He was young, confident and successful – possibly too confident. Watching the commodity markets he predicted that the price of steel was only going up. In the early part of 1969 he bought 100,000 tons of steel for US$20million at US$200 a ton. He was to take delivery of it in October that year. As the price of steel rose, supplies of it ran out.

One of his business competitors in Libya was Vittorio Haddad, an astute industrialist. ‘One day I was walking in Tripoli when a hand touched my shoulder,’ said Nada. ‘It was Haddad whom I did not know. I told him I knew of him and his reputation. He asked if I would sell half of my steel consignment to him. By then the price was US$450 a ton – the steel was worth another US$25million. I saw no reason to sell to him – the price was still going up.

‘Haddad looked at me and said: “Will you take some advice from a Jew?”

‘“It will be difficult but go ahead.”

‘“Sell half and play with half.”

‘I didn’t listen to him. I didn’t sell.’

By 1 September1969, the day Colonel Muammar Gaddafi took control of Libya, Youssef Nada’s kingdom was thriving. He had his fleet of 36 ships at sea, bringing riches to Libya – oil and iron, and barley and wheat and some of the cement which helped build huge portions of the modern Middle East. And also US$45million-worth of steel which he owned outright.

It was 7am when Youssef Nada got the news of the coup by phone from Saad Al-Jazairi. And when he turned on the radio at his home in Tripoli the news was echoed by artillery fire in the city. He knew instantly that Gaddafi’s action would have the support of Nasser. Libya was no longer safe for him.

With the coup came the curfew. To walk out on the streets would invite a bullet, unless that is you were essential – like Youssef Nada’s friend Dr Singh: ‘He was a Sikh from India,’ said Nada. ‘We were both bachelors and he was always coming to my house for dinner and to listen to music and talk and read in my library when I was busy. We were good friends and he was allowed to move around: doctors were given special permission during the curfew and the first thing he did was come to visit me. He told me the situation. All the rebels were praising Nasser as if he were their God. Gaddafi and the rest saw Nasser as a hero – and that was bad for me.

‘I was well-known as being against Nasser – on his death list – and a friend of King Idris. They would be after me. I had ships in port but they had not been unloaded. Into this came my neighbour Victorio Bagani who was the agent of Volkswagen in Tripoli. He was Jewish and very frightened about what would happen to him. He said: “I am alone. My family left to Rome two days ago to celebrate Yom Kippur and I was planning to follow them tomorrow but now I am alone and very afraid. Can I stay with you?”

‘I said to him: “The house is here, the music is here, the library is here, the kitchen is here, the freezer is here. The cooker is here, the bedrooms are here and they are for you to use. Do what you want to do.” I had to concentrate myself on how to stay alive. He called his secretary to the house and she eventually arranged his escape to Canada from Tripoli via Malta. I too escaped, but only just. I took a cement cargo ship to freedom.

‘For the first few days a 24-hour curfew was enforced but because of necessity, for food and essentials, it was lifted for a couple of hours and then four hours a day. All of 9,700 tons of freight was unloaded from one of my ships but there were still about 300 tons on board. The captain was in Tripoli, the owner of the ship was in Greece and I was paying the bills from Vienna.

‘The captain was demanding money, communications were interrupted. But if I sent any cable to Vienna even from the ship I’d be accused of smuggling money and a crime against the new regime.

‘The captain told me: “Mr Nada the owner says he will be bankrupted and it is better that you talk to him from the ship’s system.” I had a plan and agreed to do it from the ship the next day. There was a shortage of food and those who had it in port could go there but with a permit. It was my chance. When you go on a pilgrimage to Mecca you go not with your passport but with a hajj travel document which is a special visa for Saudi Arabia.

‘I went to the port with the hajj document, two passports, my cheque book and money in my shoe. I had a plastic handgun. Nothing more than that: no clothes, no razor. The hajj document worked as an ID to get to the harbour and past the guards. On the ship I told the captain we had to leave. He was in a panic, wanting money for the owner, wanting me to sail with him for support but frightened for his own safety. I told him to get permission from the port authority to sail.

‘They told him: “Wait. The guards will come for an inspection.”

‘And they did, by a speed-gunboat. There were about a dozen of them in uniform and carrying machine guns. When they boarded the ship the captain lost his nerve, saying, “Mr Nada, you have to get out. Mr Nada you have to leave the ship.”

‘I replied, are you mad? You said to me to stay here, and he pleaded, “Mr Nada I have children.” “Yes, you have children. You want them to live without you or with you? If I am to be killed, you will be killed before me.” I had no choice but to threaten him with the plastic gun, which looked like the real thing. It was life or death. There was a big refrigerator in his cabin-office and he said I could hide behind it.

‘His desk was across the room and I told him: “You sit at that desk where I can see you. If you move from there I will shoot you.” It was tense and it was hot. The guards appeared before the captain: “Anyone stowed away?” I was watching him from behind the fridge and he was sweating. The guards took an inspection. Of course, they found nothing and we were given permission to leave Libya.

‘I stayed behind the fridge for seven hours until we left territorial waters, leaving behind my home and Libya and my business involving tens of millions of dollars. When I emerged from my hiding place the captain had to carry me – my circulation had stopped. My body wouldn’t move on its own, the plastic gun was locked in my hand.

‘My eyes were on the captain all the time. He was a frightened man and that is always a dangerous man. I didn’t know what he’d do. From Libya we went to Tunis, for which I had a Tunisian passport. The captain begged me to stay with him until Greece because he feared the crew would say I had paid him to take me, a fugitive, out of Libya and that he was a communist. I was his only witness to what had really happened.

‘I was between two minds: I was already safe but if I stayed with the ship I would pass through the territorial waters of Libya again, and they could catch me. On the other hand, I thought: “If he will be a victim and I will be saved. How can I live after that?” I had an internal struggle about if I could live after that with the feeling that I’d dumped somebody who was instrumental, no matter how reluctantly, in my freedom.

‘I said that I would take the risk and stay with him. When the security came to the ship in Tunis they said that because of my passport I could disembark but we sailed on and passed the Libyan territorial waters. I went to the ship’s tower to use the radio telephone to talk to the bank in Vienna. I had tipped the radio operator quite handsomely with cash and he said: “Mr Nada, take care of yourself. The captain asked me to send three cables to Piraeus to the security and the harbourmaster and the president and it is very dangerous for you.”

When he learned I’d been in the radio room the captain looked distraught; I took it seriously. I stopped eating and drinking anything that wasn’t sealed because he might poison me. I stayed in a cabin until we arrived in Greece. Three gunboats surrounded us guiding the vessel to a berth. They had information that there was a fugitive, a stowaway, from Libya on board. The ship’s owner, who was my friend, arrived and started to quarrel loudly with the captain in a very loud voice in Greek, and tried to hit him.

‘Next the police arrived and asked for my passport and demanded to know where I had come from. Angrily I replied: “Tunisia. I have a passport. I don’t need a visa. I’m entering your country from a port which is allowed for anyone to enter. I have a valid passport.”

‘Another official saw the steam from my ears and came forward: “Mr Nada, don’t be upset. I understand your case. Where is your passport?” He looked at the passport and he said to me: “We have a problem Mr Nada. Your case is not in our hands. It is in the hands of the president. Cables arrived to us and to the president. Today is Friday, nobody can contact the president. Tomorrow and Sunday nobody can contact him. Can we ask you to stay on board until Monday morning?”

‘I had no choice: stay there or go on land to prison for the weekend. I asked the ship owner to arrange a lawyer and to call Ghaleb Himmat, a contact I trusted, to join me from Munich as soon as he could. On the Monday, the Civil Security Service people arrived and my lawyer asked where we were going. The leader replied: “I’m not allowed to say to you.”

‘They told my lawyer to stay behind and took me the office of the president, Georgios Papadopoulos, who’d taken over the government with a military coup two years earlier. I hadn’t met him before. “Mr President,” I said. “Is there anything I have done wrong?’ “No, no, no. There is not a problem. If you want asylum we can give to you. I told them to stamp your passport for one year and if you want more there is no problem. You are the only one who has come out of Libya. All the news which we hear about Libya is from the BBC. I want to know the reality. Libya is very important for us. The king is here in Greece. If we do not treat him well and he returns we will lose Libya. If we treat him well and he doesn’t return and Gaddafi stays we will lose Libya. I need to know.”

‘The king had been in Turkey for medical treatment when Gaddafi took over. He had sailed from there to the village of Kamena Vourla on the Marmaris Sea. Georgios Papadopoulos asked me if the king was popular. I said he was and he was loved. He asked me if I thought the king would return to Libya. I said he wouldn’t and he quizzed me about that contradiction. I said it was true his people like him but King Idris’s people, those with power around him, are all corrupt and cowards.

‘I told him that the people were fed up with the corrupt people, the gangsters in the government and that they will welcome Gaddafi and the new officers. Nasser’s propaganda is there for them to build on. Gaddafi and his people were praising Nasser as I left Libya. He looked at me and said: “That means the king will not return.”

‘I agreed with him and he made arrangements that I was to have any help I needed from his offices. I asked if I could visit the king?’ “Mr Nada, I didn’t hear anything.” He repeated it two times. I thanked him very much. I left and after meeting with the lawyers and the shipping people, Ghaleb Himmat and I rented a car and went to visit King Idris.

‘It was very sad. He was old and very weak. I kissed his hand and said to him: “Your Majesty. I am at your disposal if I can assist.” He said: “I believe I have to spend the rest of my life in Egypt.” He couldn’t stay in Greece. If they treated him as a refugee he would not accept it. If he was treated as royalty the Gaddafi and the Opposition would be angry: it was a fine line. He was a righteous man who was surrounded by bad people.

‘After this meeting nobody heard about the king being in Greece. He stayed about ten days or so, and then he left for Egypt. Mr Himmat and I took the first plane to Vienna. By then I was very ill. I had no strength at all, even to stand up.’

But Nada was aware enough to hear about Nasser’s list of 80 dangerous enemies to be extradited to Cairo from Libya, a list Nasser personally had sent to his acolyte Gadaffi who harboured his own ambitions to replace the Egyptian dictator as the leader of the Arab world.

Youssef Nada left Tripoli on 9 September 1969, once more hiding behind the ship’s master’s fridge. The following day the ‘most wanted’ list arrived from Cairo. At the top of the execution list was Dr Mahmoud Abu-Saud and after him, at number two for extradition, was Youssef Nada.

Dr Mahmoud Abu-Saud, chief adviser for the Central Bank and Economic Ministry during the rule of King Idris, was on holiday when the coup happened. He went on to help organise the Muslim Brotherhood in America and was involved with the Muslim Society in the United States (MAS). Youssef Nada was still in hiding behind a fridge, at sea, when the order arrived in Tripoli. The others were extradited and were imprisoned without trial for many years until Nasser died and Sadat released them. Some vanished.

Nada had lost millions including his consignment of steel (‘From that day I have always split my business in half and heeded Vittoria Haddad’s advice’, he said ruefully). Yet, through pure determination he re-established himself, principally in Europe taking up residence in the municipality of Campione d’Italia which rests quietly inside the Swiss canton Ticino, separated from the rest of Italy by Lake Lugano and the magnificent mountains which surround it. From there he set up offices as far apart as Indianapolis in America and Glasgow in Scotland and many others in between, including Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Liechtenstein and Lagos.

The 24 hours in a day were not enough for him to follow the stream of business orders. He was the front runner, business hunter, nucleus of public relations, alert elastic negotiator, managing a complicated net of contacts in business, politics, religion and social activities. His relations with his staff and employees was formal and businesslike. He needed someone he trusted not only in business but also in the other lines.

That person must be known to him, a committed Muslim, trustworthy, polite and able to act as a ‘shock absorber’. He believed Ali Ghaleb Himmat was equipped with all those specifications: ‘He is a very peace-loving man: between man and man, and man or woman, not only between nations or factions. It was said once that if somebody pulled at his jacket, he’d take it off and give it to him.’

Youssef Nada had first met Himmat in Munich ten years before in a Muslim camp during the Christmas holidays. ‘I called him to Vienna and surprised him with my offer to join me as a partner. He said he didn’t have money or experience or knowledge. I said he didn’t need money, I would train him, and the experience would come in time. I told him: “Your duty will be the back office whether I am present or absent, and you can travel to where I am not able to travel. I take you as my younger brother not a business partner.”

‘I offered 50 per cent of the profits and he had no chance to refuse and I had no time to negotiate. Nothing was written and the agreement was implemented and lasted 40 years until our names were delisted by the UN Security Council black list. We each took 50 per cent from the joint business assets residuals and though the business partnership ended we are still one family and he is still my younger brother and his family is mine. Mr Himmat was the silent motor who I supplied with the fuel of ideas. Before he finished one job I’d have another for him as important as the previous one. He is a sealed box – he’ll never reveal to anyone what he knows. This does not mean that he is an angel without drawbacks. He is a human but a good human. I never tolerate neglection of duty or postponing jobs or slow speed and he coped with that. He treated me as his father and I wanted my sons to be as him.’

From Vienna, Youssef Nada gathered his resources and rose once again and business boomed. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, North Africa and Nigeria, all rich in petrol dollars, were building by the moment, and with his cement silos and a fleet of vessels, he easily moved building materials from Europe to the Middle East and Africa – no one could compete with Youssef Nada who retained his crown as the Mediterranean ‘King of Cement’. He was able to deliver in bags and also in bulk as the market might need. With the floating terminal, bulk carriers and bagged cement from Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Italy, Spain Turkey and even Germany, he dominated the market.

Within three years of his escape from Libya he was trading seven million tons of cement a year and shipping equally impressive amounts of iron. He’d lost tens of millions of dollars with Gaddafi’s takeover of Libya but he’d returned even more powerful and higher in international industry. In 1974 he established Nada International in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where some years later he had contact with King Fahd and his advisers.

Until his silos went into operation the cement so urgently required for the construction bonanza was being discharged by helicopters in the port of Jeddah. His business deals and his fortune multiplied and diversified – and so did his roles for the Nasser-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, although he played his politics in the shadows.

With Nasser’s death from a heart attack in 1970 the man he’d treated as his poodle, his deputy Anwar Sadat, was installed as president. The powerful military group around Nasser believed they would manipulate Sadat to their will. ‘Sadat was very loyal to Nasser but he was weak and just looking after his own interests, watching out for himself,’ said Nada. ‘The other officers took the power and installed him and thought they could contain him. He was more intelligent than them. He put all of them in the prison. Now, he had to cover his back.

‘Although Sadat had persecuted the Brotherhood by order of his boss Nasser, he ordered the Brothers to be released from prisons. He said those exiled could return and would not be hurt again. Many Brothers returned; the majority were in the Arab countries, Islamic countries. Though I had offices in many of them including Cairo I was not living in any Arab country. I refused to return.’

By 1977, Youssef Nada had moved up the vertigo-inducing twist of a road which takes you out of Campione d’Italia proper and into the hills. He established himself in the splendid mountainside Villa Nada with spectacular views over the lakes. He was also recently married to Amal Chichakli from Hama in Syria where her father was an army commander and politician. Following a coup, her uncle, Adib Chichakli, became President of Syria in 1953. It was a short run into 1955 when he himself was overthrown by an Iraqi-backed coup involving the Bathists, Syrian communists and the Druze Party (Ahl al Tawhid).

Adib Chichakli had huge army and government support but to avoid blood flowing in the streets of Damascus when his power was challenged he avoided a confrontation and exiled himself to Switzerland for four years. There, he was warned his assassination had been decreed and he left for Brazil where he bought a farm. He worked the land but it was no escape – on 27 September 1964 he was murdered in Ceres, Brazil, by the Syrian Druze member Nawaf Ghazaleh.

Youssef Nada’s bride was no stranger to turbulent politics, but first there was the delicate subject of the hospitality of diplomacy to deal with. They had been in their Campione home for only one week when her husband announced there would be some guests for dinner. How many? Probably about 120.

Amal Chichakli, although an engaging, strong and confident woman, was not used to such big numbers. Her husband had a team of servants and a cook and assistants at the house and the nearby five-star Hotel Olivella in the village of Morcote, supplied extra food and staff for the catering. The event was hosted by Youssef Nada to welcome many Muslim thinkers from around the world, including Youssef al-Qaradawi, Ismail Faruqi, Mahmoud Abu Sauod, Mohamed Al Mubarak, Kurshid Ahmad, Ahmad El Asal, Abdelhamid Abusuliman and three directors of Nada International Riyadh (Hisham Altalib, Jamal Barazanji and Mohamed Shamma), and many others.

For many years it has been widely reported that their purpose was to establish the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) but Nada, the conference host, insists differently: ‘This meeting was not to create the Triple IT. It was to have a group committed to Islam to be united in ideology, to try to bring the Muslim understanding together. You cannot spread religion with war. In the beginning of Islam wars were not to dictate Islam or against those who did not accept it, but were fought against those who tried to stop their mission.

‘You must reach people’s minds to convince them of your ideas, of what you want. It is true that those that attended the meeting at my home were from different countries, from different ways of thinking but all of them were connected one way or another with the Muslim Brotherhood ideology: they didn’t want to fight, to go the way of violence.

‘The Muslim Brotherhood began in Egypt and until now every government which came to power in Egypt had targeted the Brotherhood: jail them, imprison them, stop them, stop their activity. Everything to stop them was done. As an organisation they accepted all the problems which were put on their shoulders without fighting back. It is true that one or two, or as many as ten, went out of line and used violence, but it was not the organisation, it was individuals who ran out of the line and acted independently.

‘The man who was Osama Bin Laden’s number two, Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, was a member of the Brotherhood, but when he tried to convince others that violence was the way forward they put a wall between them and him. In turn, Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri attacked the Brotherhood and considered them infidels.

‘He defected and started his own violent group. But he was never able to convince the Brotherhood to join him. He was considered immature. He went alone and did what he wanted with others he recruited. The Brotherhood couldn’t stop him, the Government could not prevent him, so how could we?

‘Even before Bin Laden was killed the so-called Al Qaeda was only al-Zawahiri and a few people around him, that is all. In my opinion in 2012 Al Qaeda doesn’t number more than around 100 persons. They are nothing, and they can make nothing. Only shadows. But there is fear in the shadows.

‘America created a ghost and talked it up so much that the fear of it heightened too. Terrorism has been in the world since the two sons of Adam. All life must be changed because of a few mad people?’

Yet, it is and was a violent world and Youssef Nada knew to take precautions. He was on the move constantly. When he travelled, Ghaleb Himmat and the team knew his movements and they would check on him. Often he would use a visa separate from his passport which would not be stamped and later compromise him.

‘We had a check and re-check system when I went anywhere. I would phone, they would call back to make sure the call was not made under threat and that I was where I said I was. And then, every few hours, they would check on me again. I always did this, for often I was with people who were targets for bombs or bullets or both. I might have been innocent collateral damage and not the intended victim.’

But when he moved through the Middle East in the 1970s he said he discovered an extraordinarily honest society: ‘I was going to my company in Riyadh and the offices there asked me to bring half a million dollars for payments. It was normal and not prohibited to carry cash. I had the cash in a bag and went to the office. About four hours later they asked me about the money. I didn’t have it. I thought I’d left it at the reception area of the hotel. I called and was told that a taxi driver had brought a bag full of money and he said it was my bag and I’d left it in the taxi.

‘The taxi driver knew it was a great deal of money and he brought it back. He gave it to the desk in the hotel and they knew it was much money. Nobody touched it. I went and I opened it, and not one dollar was missing. Then I found the taxi driver to reward him but he would take nothing. He said to me: “I cannot take money to prove that I am trustworthy. I don’t take money which is not mine. That is my duty to give it to its owner otherwise I am a thief.” I tried, and no way would he take anything.

‘At the end of the 1980s in Riyadh I had a ready-mix factory for cement in Saudi Arabia and it had a safe built in with concrete in the wall. The staff came in one day and it had gone! The change in society was happening.’

In the mid-1970s, Egypt’s Minister of Housing and Construction, Hasballah Al-Kafrawi, visited Youssef Nada to try to convince him to help his country. Cement was being sold for ten times its commercial value on the black market and the government wanted a solution. The prime minister was Mamdouh Salem who as the security commander had overseen the arrest of the young Youssef Nada in Alexandria. Hasballah Al-Kafrawi assured him there would be no trouble returning to his homeland: ‘All the Brotherhood members have returned home from all over the world.’

Youssef Nada was not convinced, but kept his counsel. He knew that unless all arrangements went smoothly he would not be engaged with any project. He asked for a berth in Suez harbour for one of his floating cement terminals and permission to move 100 railway wagons there from his Swiss fleet. The port berth was given to an Israeli national named Ben Natan. No explanation was given. At the same time he was approached by Prince Mohammad Al-Faisal, the son of the recently assassinated King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who wanted to establish a bank in Egypt.

‘He had good relations with Sadat and he got the licence for the Faisal Islamic Bank,’ said Nada. ‘There were a lot of influences. The head of Saudi intelligence, Kamal Adham, was a brother-in-law of the king and was well connected to the American administration and the CIA. The Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf [the nation’s religious endowment government department] proposed that the Islamic bank licence was written so that 50 per cent would be Egyptian and 50 per cent from the other Muslim countries.

‘Mohammed Faisal said to me: “I don’t want the others to dictate to me something against the Islamic rules. I need with me, within the Egyptian portion of the bank shares, somebody from the private sector who I can trust and who is committed to the principles of Islam in the country. I need you to be there. You have to participate and take some shares.”

‘I said I wouldn’t go to Egypt and that in 1966 they had sentenced me to ten years in jail in absentia. I was innocent – but a target. He said: “Now, there is no problem, and we have good relations with Sadat. We can arrange it.”

‘I refused. He insisted. He said the meeting for the allocation of the shares had to be in Egypt. Without alerting anyone I went to Cairo at the end of 1977. Mr Himmat and my office were to monitor my movements. I took my Tunisian passport, not Egyptian. I arrived at 8pm. They held me at the airport until 2am in the morning. An officer came in from time-to-time and then disappeared. My passport went to police intelligence and then military intelligence and eventually a high ranking officer in the airport turned up and said: “Mr Nada, you have to sort it out with the higher authority. We are servants. We were executing orders.”

‘They allowed me into the country and I went to the hotel in the early hours of the morning. I called Hasballah Al-Kafrawi and told him I was leaving that day. I told him what happened. He said to wait for him. Within half-an-hour, he called me. God bless him, he was kind to me; he was very polite with me.

‘After fifteen minutes the Minister of Interior, Nabawi Ismail, who was also the Deputy Prime Minister called me: “Youssef, I have heard this story, it is impossible. The country is not as before. It is open and we need our sons. We need the Egyptians from everywhere. It was a mistake. It might have been military intelligence. We have to meet.”

‘I told him: “I’m sorry Your Excellency. Whether it is small officers or big officers, it happened. That means that there is something wrong. I have to leave today.” He arrived in thirty minutes and I told him: “I know that you have done a lot of good things to the country. You are offering your best to the others and to me. I appreciate it, but what can I say? When it happened to me? I understand and I believe you, but there must be other motives involved, other parties playing in this game.

‘He said: “Maybe it came from Almahi [the chief of military intelligence]. If I wanted to arrest you now, I couldn’t.” I said: “Of course you can. This is very clear to me.” He said: “I would not be telling you this, unless it is true. Also it is your mistake for one in your position must announce his arrival in order to be received in the VIP lounge.” I said: “No, I believe you, but what happens from your side or from any other side is the real issue for me. I wanted to see the reality.”

‘The same day, Hasballah Al-Kafrawi arranged a lunch with Nabawi Ismail and four of the biggest businessmen at the time: Osman Ahmed Othman, his brother Hussein Othman, Haj Hilmi Abdul Majid, and Abdul Azeem Luqmeh, who were also friends of mine. They all told me that everything in the country had changed radically; it was another period, but they all wanted me to stay. I wondered about that and I said: “Thank you very much.” I stayed for one week.’

The next time Nada went to Egypt was with his wife, to choose members of the Board of the Faisal Islamic Bank. The Ministry of Awqaf had to have the larger portion of the Egyptian share and Nada had the next biggest shareholding and was elected as a member of the first board of directors.

The visit was disquieting: ‘My wife and I had each been given a car and driver and while I was at a meeting she returned to the hotel and asked for the key to the room. It wasn’t there. She thought I must be, but when she went up to the room she met three men coming out. Later, I was told the men might have been military intelligence, or some other agency. I said: “Where they’re from doesn’t matter. The result is the same. If they did it, they can do it again.”’

Nada attended the first board meeting of the Faisal Islamic Bank in Egypt with Prince Mohammed but then resigned as a member of the board whilst retaining his shares: ‘I had many friends inside the bank as well as the chairman and the founder, and because it was an Islamic Bank there were people working inside from the Muslim Brotherhood.

‘But as for Egypt – I left and I have never been back. I cannot forget what happened to me – I can’t wipe it away like a pencil mark with a rubber. After the suffering in the military prison, I’d never risk being locked up in jail.’

But that didn’t stop him putting himself in peril.