The An Nur mosque has not existed for a long time. Four years ago, those responsible had to empty the rooms in the orange-grey industrial building in Winterthur Hegi. From the outside, nothing reminds us of the time when radical Islamists mingled with normal believers, networked and some of them travelled to Syria and Iraq – to the self-proclaimed caliphate of the terrorist militia Islamic State.
That time is over. But what happened in the rooms of that mosque is still a topic of discussion today. Also before the Zurich High Court. Since Monday, ten men have had to stand trial. One of them, a minor at the time of the crime, was excused from attending the trial. The case concerns incidents that took place on the evening of November 22, 2016.
Shortly after 7.30 pm, a police officer received a message with an emergency call. It was from a Muslim man from North Africa who had locked himself in the toilet of the house of prayer. The message read: “Urgent Winterthur Mosque Please. Urgent. They want to kill my friend”. A little more than one and a half hours later, the police task forces arrived at the mosque. But what actually happened during this time? This is a question for the high court to judge.
The accused can be attributed to the Islamist milieu in Winterthur. They allegedly detained, threatened and abused the two believers from North Africa – because they suspected them to be informants of the journalist Kurt Pelda. Pelda had repeatedly reported in detail about the events in the mosque.According to the indictment, the men confronted the two alleged informers after they had caught one of them taking pictures with his mobile phone. They allegedly harassed him, hit him on the head and spat at him; they took the mobile phone from him and demanded the pin code for the phone. On the phone they found pictures of worshippers praying and pictures of the mosque.
One of the accused allegedly threatened, “How do you want to die? Shall we destroy your skull or shall we behead you?” Another grabbed him by the lower jaw, according to the indictment, forced a ten-dollar bill into his mouth and forced him to swallow it. He had sold his religion for money, he is said to have said.
Finally, the assistant imam of the mosque at the time also arrived. The 57-year-old Libyan only came to the prayer house when the alleged acts of violence were already in progress. His son had called him beforehand – there would be a problem. The imam and a Tunisian, who had been elected the new chairman of the An-Nur cultural association only a few days before, allegedly interrogated the two alleged spies in an office. According to the indictment, they allegedly forced the two North Africans to be photographed and to make a predetermined oral confession.
In November 2018, the Winterthur District Court found eight of the mosque members present at the time guilty. It imposed conditional prison sentences or fines, among other things for deprivation of liberty, coercion and threats. Two cases were acquitted. The court’s sentences were significantly lower than the prosecution’s demands. The prosecution therefore appealed against the verdict, as did several of the accused Islamists.
Three years after the sensational trial, here they are again, nine of the ten men from the An-Nur mosque. Their strategy: remain silent, deny and downplay. They see themselves unjustly on trial. One of them says: “I don’t know why I had to spend six months in pre-trial detention. And that at the age of 18. I lost a year of my apprenticeship. This is unjust.” After his questioning, he emphatically pushes the chair back to the table.
Another one states that he suffers from an anxiety disorder because of the prison stay and is therefore in psychiatric treatment.
And the man who allegedly forced one of the victims to swallow a 10-franc note on the night in question denies everything today. Even more: this trial is a charade, he says. “I am the victim, not the others.” He does not want to say more – except that he demands an acquittal.
The former An-Nur Imam is more detailed than the young defendants. But he too denies the accusations. The 57-year-old Libyan came to Switzerland as a political refugee in 2000, where he was granted asylum. In court questioning, he says everything was much more harmless. “My task was to make peace.”
He had taken the two alleged victims to the office. He wanted to know who they were and what they were doing in the mosque. “They could have been terrorists,” says the Libyan. Neither he nor the short-term president of the association, who was also present in the office, forced them to confess.
On the contrary: “One of the victims wanted to tell us everything of his own accord. He felt guilty because he had taken photos and spied in the mosque. That is a great shame in our country.” He did not witness any assaults or threats against the two men. The ex-imam also sees himself as a victim of the justice system. He says: “I am actually innocent. I thought I would be praised for what I did – not punished.”
One, however, remained practically silent. The 25-year-old Swiss is the young man who was arrested in Switzerland together with a companion after the terrorist attack in Vienna last November. He knew the assassin personally, even met him in Vienna last summer. The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland is investigating him for criminal acts in preparation for murder and for aiding and abetting murder. He completely refuses to testify on the charges in the An-Nur trial.
The trial is scheduled to last several days. On Tuesday, the prosecution and the defence will present their arguments. The verdict is expected to follow at the beginning of October.
https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/an-nur-prozess-islamisten-aus-winterthur-sehen-sich-als-opfer-ld.1644089