BERN: A portrait of Adolf Hitler has long adorned the study of Ahmed Huber, a 74-year-old Swiss convert to Islam who lives outside this small capital city.

After Sept 11, he twinned the picture with one of Osama Osama.

For years, Huber has been barnstorming the far-right circuit, speaking to a European congress of neo-Nazi youth organizations and Germany’s far-right National Democratic Party.

He has taken the same message to Aryan youth meetings in the United States. And then there is his other identity. Huber works frequently with radical Muslim groups.

He is a director of Nada Management, a Swiss company described by the US Treasury Department as a financial adviser to Osama’s terrorist network. He acknowledges having met Al Qaeda operatives, but denies any financial role in the organization.

How many of Germany’s estimated 58,000 neo-Nazis are taking part in the alliance is unclear; to date there is no evidence that neo-Nazi violence against Muslim immigrants, a recurring problem in Germany, has declined.

Certainly the events of Sept 11 produced fits of joy among some members of the European far right, according to groups that monitor hate speech.

Young supporters of the National Front in France drank champagne on the evening of Sept 11, according to groups opposing neo-Nazis.

German neo-Nazi Mario Schulz burned a US flag at a post-Sept 11 rally in front of skinheads wearing Palestinian scarves.

In the same period, the writings of William Pierce, the American whose novel “The Turner Diaries” inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, have appeared on the Hezbollah’s website. Pierce also has been interviewed regularly on Radio Iran by telephone from his compound in West Virginia.

The outlines of cooperation were visible before Sept 11. In 1991, German neo-Nazis tried to form a “Condor Legion” to fight alongside Iraqis against the US-led international coalition.

More recently, members of the European far right have journeyed to Baghdad to express solidarity with President Saddam Hussein. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.