[JURIST] UN Under-Secretary-General Sergei Ordzhonikidze on Friday condemned calls by Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi for a jihad on Switzerland. Gaddafi issued the call in response to Switzerland’s recent vote to ban the construction of minarets. Ordzhonikidze called the declaration “inadmissible”. Also Friday, a spokesperson for EU high representative Catherine Ashton criticized Gaddafi’s calls. Gaddafi had earlier warned that the ban could make Switzerland an enticing target for al Qaeda.
In December, Hafid Ouardiri, a former spokesman at the Geneva Mosque, filed a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) challenging the ban on the construction of minarets, a week after a group of Swiss intellectuals called for the ban’s reversal. Swiss Supreme Court President Lawrence Meyer also said that two suits have been filed in federal court challenging the ban’s legality. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has condemned the ban as a form of religious discrimination. In 2008, the Swiss government announced that Swiss nationalist parties had gathered enough signatures on their initiative against the construction of minarets to force a national referendum on whether the country’s constitution should be amended to ban the structures. The initiative was originally sponsored by the anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party (SVP).