Al Karama
Other names: Al Karama Foundation / مؤسسة الكرامة
Type: Non-governmental, self-professed human rights organisation
Country: Switzerland
Organisation Ideology: Muslim Brotherhood
Founded: 2004
Online Resources
Official website: Al Karama
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7.3K followers
Overview
Al Karama is a non-governmental human rights organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland. It was established in 2004 to advocate reform and human rights protection in Arab countries. The organisation also offers legal assistance to victims of human rights violations in the Arab world. Al Karama was founded by Abdulrahman Al Nuaimi, a Muslim Brotherhood Qatari cleric accused by the United States Department of the Treasury of being “a Qatar-based terrorist financier and facilitator who has provided money and material support and conveyed communications to Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen for more than a decade.” Read more about Al Nuaimi here on EMAN.
Al Karama’s mission, according to its official website, is “to assist individuals exposed to or at risk of extrajudicial execution, enforced disappearance, torture, and arbitrary detention”. The organisation reports human rights violations to international human rights organisations such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. In addition, Al Karama acts as a platform for victims, their families to share their stories through social media channels. It also uses media, lobbying, advocacy campaigns, and collaboration with other NGOs and civil society groups to ensure the protection of victims.
The Geneva-based organisation issues reports on the human rights situation in 20 countries. These reports could be submitted to UN bodies, such as the Committee Against Torture (CAT), the Human Rights Committee (HRCtee), and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances.
Although, the organisation claims to defend human rights regardless of sex, religion and political beliefs, its twitter publications focuses predominantly on nations aligned against the Muslim Brotherhood such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and to a lesser degree Algeria. The organisation however does not focus on other countries in the region with opposing views on political Islam. This is due to the ideological alignment of the organisation’s leadership, which is considered close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Karama focuses heavily on countries where Islamism is under pressure in a likely attempt to discredit anti-Islamist governments across the Muslim World in the West.
Ties to Extremism
In an article in 2018, the Swiss newspaper Le Temps, reported that the government’s intelligence services were investigating serious allegations on existing ties between Al Karama’s founder and president until 2014 Abdulrahman Al Nuaimi and Abdullah Al Muhaysini, a Saudi cleric linked to al Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda linked group based in Syria at the time that morphed into Hay’at Tahrir Al Sham. Although, according to the newspaper, Swiss intelligence services were still looking for proof linking Al Nuaimi to Al Muhaysini, the US has sanctioned Al Nuaimi due to his links with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria.
In addition, the other two founders of Al Karama - Rachid Mesli and Abbas Aroua - are both designated terrorists by the Algerian authorities for their alleged role in supporting, arming and financing militant groups in Algeria in the 1990s. Aroua is also the co-author of “An Inquiry Into the Algerian Massacres'', a book investigating massacres during the civil war in Algeria in the 90s and accusing the Algerian army of killing civilians during the war.
Meanwhile, Mesli is Geneva-based lawyer who became famous for defending Abassi Madani and Ali Belhaj, the two leaders of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a banned Algerian radical Islamist party and the winner of the parliamentary elections of 1991, which were suspended by the Military. Mesli was sentenced for three years of prison in 1996. In 1999, he received a presidential pardon and left Algeria for Switzerland. Mesli was arrested briefly in 2015 by Italian authorities following a request by Algiers but Rome refused to hand him over to the Algerian authorities on charges of extremism due to the “vague and incomplete” accusations against him.
Al Karama’s leadership also includes Mourad Dhina, an Islamist Algerian figure. Dhina joined Al Karama in 2007 with the aim to boost the growth and professionalisation of the organisation. Dhina fled Algeria in 1995 amid a wide government’s crackdown on Islamist leaders. During the civil war and as a prominent member of the FIS, Dhina advocated the creation of an Islamic state in Algeria and supported the fight of militant groups against the Algerian army. In an interview by a French channel in the 1990s, Dhina refused to condemn Jihadi violence and called left wing intellectuals supporting the Algerian regime to accept Islamist assassinations against them as a just response to their support for the regime. Furthermore, France and the United States have accused him of arms trafficking in favour of militant groups in Algeria in the 1990s. In 2002, the Swiss government banned Dhina from “justifying, encouraging or supporting in a material way terrorism and violent extremism aimed at destabilizing Algeria.” The government’s statement added that Dhina could be expelled to Algeria if he doesn’t comply with this decision.
