Surrounded by European Union countries that consider the Palestinian Islamist organisation to be terrorist, Switzerland continues not to apply sanctions to Hamas, nor to ban its leaders from its territory. But since the attacks on 7 October, the Federal Council (government) has decided to use the word “terrorism” to describe the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. It has also announced that it is going to carry out a “detailed analysis of financial flows” to the Middle East, a very Swiss way of saying that the government intends to control the sources of funding for Hamas.
How can we explain that certain influential figures of the Muslim Brotherhood are constantly giving lessons in morality, while they lead a private life that is often totally dissolute? One immediately thinks of Tariq Ramadan, whose investigating judges recently announced the end of the investigations into the rape accusations, thus opening the way for a trial to be held soon. But it is also the case of Mohamed Karmous, in Switzerland, victim of blackmailers. He was recently filmed without his knowledge having sex with a girl he met the day before.
Preparing a trip to Syria or Somalia can now earn you years in prison in Switzerland. Bern is developing preventive justice and wants to take on “potential terrorists”, like some sci-fi movies which say that in the future the police will not only arrest the perpetrators of a heist, but will have the right to intercept the people who brought up the idea to commit a robbery…
