Once a well-respected public commentator and academic in his native Austria, Farid Hafez’s life slowly began to unravel after rumors spread that he was an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood — allegedly a sleeper agent promoting extremism in the country.
“I used to be published every month in newspapers from both the left and right. I had a high profile in Austria, and people took me seriously,” Hafez said. “But some years ago, people started calling me to tell me that there were rumors about me spreading behind closed doors. I felt there was a difference, and that something was changing.”
“Eventually,” he said, “I was sidelined to such an extent that newspapers would not even publish me anymore.”
“I was sidelined to such an extent that newspapers would not even publish me anymore.”
Hafez’s growing ostracism in Austria culminated in a controversial police operation in 2020 called Operation Luxor. Hafez and others were targeted with raids and asset seizures. Hafez ultimately left Austria for the United States, where he took up a visiting professorship at Williams College in Massachusetts.
Operation Luxor was later deemed unlawful by Austrian courts, and the police’s terrorism charges against Hafez were eventually dropped. Today, the case is widely viewed as a witch hunt that targeted Austrian Muslims. Despite his exoneration, the damage to Hafez’s life from the yearslong ordeal have been immense.
“A lot of this has basically been about destroying my reputation,” he said. “Everybody knew that I was affected by this, even far from Austria.”
Little did Hafez know at the time, but the rumors about him and others in Austria originated from a research center at George Washington University and a prominent U.S.-based terrorism analyst there named Lorenzo Vidino, according to a lawsuit filed late last month. Hafez’s suit alleges fraud and racketeering, asking for $10 million in damages from Vidino, along with George Washington University and its Program on Extremism, the research center that Vidino heads.
The lawsuit, according to a press release, alleges that Hafez and others were targets of an organized smear campaign, accusing Vidino of “participating in a criminal enterprise that deployed fake journalists, social media bots and pay-to-play reporters to destroy the careers of dozens of individuals by constructing and disseminating false narratives linking them to the Muslim Brotherhood.” (Vidino and George Washington University haven’t filed a response to the lawsuit, and neither replied to requests for comment.)
The campaign against Hafez exploited an environment of suspicion that can result in Muslim or Arab scholars being targeted, said an academic who works on anti-Islam bias, noting that such campaigns often fixate on people whose work touches on politically sensitive subjects.
Photo: Emrah Yorulmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
“Farid Hafez is not the first Muslim professor to be targeted by ideologues who seek to silence and censor scholarship on Islamophobia, or Palestine, or anti-Arab racism,” said Sahar Aziz, a national security expert and director of the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University. “In the U.S., individuals who are critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East are often slandered as un-American or disloyal. In direct contradiction of American principles of academic freedom and free speech, Islamophobic organizations and government officials seek to censor Arab and Muslim professors when they disagree with the substance of their scholarship.”
“Meanwhile,” Aziz added, “in Europe there is vilification of almost any Muslim individual or group that is politically active, such that their activities are conflated with support for terrorism.”
GWU’s Lorenzo Vidino
Vidino worked with a private investigation firm in Switzerland that covertly spread spurious allegations against various Muslims in Europe, accusing them of involvement in terrorism and extremism, according to a report last year in the New Yorker.
Many of the details in the New Yorker, which are repeated in part in Hafez’s lawsuit, became public when hackers leaked internal communications from the firm behind the campaign, known as Alp Services. The hackers sent the files from Alp, another defendant in Hafez’s suit, to one of its intended targets: an American citizen living in Italy named Hazem Nada, who alleged in a separate lawsuit that his company and personal reputation were tarnished by unfounded accusations of terrorist financing.
The leak suggested that the operation was being financed to the tune of millions of dollars by the United Arab Emirates government as part of a broader campaign to destroy perceived ideological enemies in Western countries, and particularly those it accused of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The UAE campaign reportedly targeted more than 1,000 people in 18 European countries.
Among those mentioned in the files as working with Alp was Vidino, who took a 3,000-euro consulting fee from the firm for “a series of gossipy reports about the Brotherhood’s reach,” according to a passage from the New Yorker quoted in Hafez’s lawsuit. The “gossipy reports,” which helped form the basis of the campaign on behalf of the UAE, appeared to consist of lists of suspected Islamists that Alp could then show it had discredited on behalf of its Emirati client.
Alp has not responded to Hafez’s lawsuit or a request for comment.
In addition to his work with the Austrian government and George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, Vidino has public connections with think tanks based in the UAE, including Hedayah in Abu Dhabi. He previously worked at the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a think tank led by anti-Muslim activist Steve Emerson.
Nada filed a lawsuit against the UAE government, Vidino, Alp Services, and others involved in a smear campaign against him. The campaign led to Nada’s oil trading company declaring bankruptcy. He is seeking $2.7 billion in damages. The defendants have not responded to the allegations.
Hafez, a respected academic researcher in Austria, was targeted in a smear campaign related to his work on anti-Muslim racism. Vidino’s involvement in the campaign led to a police raid on Hafez’s home, despite no evidence of terrorism found. Hafez’s reputation suffered, and he has filed a lawsuit against Vidino, George Washington University, and Alp Services seeking relief.
The impact of the smear campaign and raid on Hafez’s life has prompted him to seek relief in American courts. Vidino’s suspected ties to the UAE raise troubling questions according to Hafez’s lawsuit.
Hafez and others in similar positions viewed Vidino as a tool to continue benefiting from their connections in the UAE, with truthfulness being of little importance.
It is suggested by Hafez’s lawsuit that Vidino’s support may have been motivated not only by ideology but also by financial gains from the UAE.
“Vidino’s actions may have contributed to the criminalization of critical analysis of Islam and anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe,” Hafez remarked. “Initially, my focus was on his affiliations with the far-right in the US, assuming he was driven by ideology. I had no knowledge of the UAE’s involvement in his work, potentially being the main instigator.”
