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Europe

Willie Brigitte goes on trial for Oz plot

2007-02-07

This clown was bad news. If the Frenchies can put him away, we might have a chance against the rest. A French Muslim convert accused of plotting to attack a Sydney nuclear reactor and strategic targets across Australia, goes on trial from Wednesday in Paris on charges of terrorist conspiracy. Willie Brigitte, a 38-year-old from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, was arrested in Australia in 2003 following a tip-off from the French intelligence services, and deported for immigration offences. In French custody since his return, Brigitte faces up to 10 years' imprisonment on charges of "criminal conspiracy in relation with a terrorist enterprise", at the outcome of the three-day trial. Brigitte has been portrayed in Australia as the country's most dangerous Al-Qaeda link, suspected of plotting destruction on the scale of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. France's top anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who investigated the case, suspects him of setting up a terror cell in Australia on the orders of the Pakistani Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Its alleged targets included the Pine Gap US electronic intelligence outpost in central Australia, the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney, and military bases across the country. Its alleged targets included the Pine Gap US electronic intelligence outpost in central Australia, the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney, and military bases across the country. But according to the former head of France's DGSE foreign intelligence agency, Alain Chouet, French prosecutors may have trouble proving their case. "Objectively, there isn't very much against him. The case is not empty -- this young man is certainly a troublemaker, involved in radical circles -- but nothing like the terrorists of September 11." "If the Australians had concrete, converging evidence, why didn't they prosecute him themselves?" Chouet asked. "Willie Brigitte is not the case of the century and he is certainly no Islamist mastermind." However Louis Caprioli, who was head of the DST domestic intelligence agency at the time of Brigitte's arrest, said the evidence against him was solid. "One thing is certain, he wasn't in Australia for a holiday in the sun. It was an operational trip, aimed at setting up a cell with a view to carrying out attacks," he said. "To liken him to Osama bin Laden is to make him sound more important than he is, but he certainly had an important operational role." Brigitte was first spotted by French DST agents in 1998, after he converted to Islam and travelled to Yemen to attend a Koranic school seen as linked to Al-Qaeda. Back in Paris, he started attending a radical Islamist mosque, rubbing shoulders with members of the armed Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). I wonder if that mosque is still open. If it is, why? He allegedly went on to run forest training camps in France to toughen up would-be Islamist fighters, and was linked to a group that abetted the murder of the anti-Taliban Afghan war chief Ahmad Shah Massood, killed two days before September 11. After 9/11, Brigitte is thought to undergone combat training in Pakistan -- after a "sleeping period" back in France -- and was allegedly summoned to Australia by a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative. Moving under the wing of Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistani-born architect sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2006 for planning to blow up Sydney's power grid, he settled in a southwest suburb of Sydney. There he spent five months working in a kebab shop, married an Australian Muslim convert and former army signaller, Melanie Brown, and allegedly drew up plans for his own attack. His French lawyer Jean-Claude Durimel insists his client went to Australia "for a change of life" and says there is "no material evidence" against him. "My client has never been a terrorist, he never plotted any kind of attack in Australia. The prosecution doesn't even know the target of this alleged attack: they've listed everything except the Sydney Opera House," Durimel said. The French prosecution against Brigitte was made possible by the catch-all offence of "criminal conspiracy in relation with a terrorist enterprise" -- the charge used in almost all terrorism cases in France. One of the toughest anti-terrorism laws in Europe, it gives judges wide-ranging powers of preventive arrest and detention, but has been criticised as paving the way for unfair imprisonment. Lemme guess. Hitler would have loved French anti-terror laws (rolls eyes) However, France's Bruguiere -- who has spent two decades tracking Islamic militants among France's five-million strong Muslim community -- says the law is his chief weapon, allowing him to break up radical groups before they are able to act.

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Afghanistan

Former Taliban chief divulges details of Massood’s slaying

2006-09-12

The beat-up video camera was delivered to Afghanistan in a box, and picked up by two clean-shaven Arabs posing as journalists. They met with Osama bin Laden before leaving on their mission — to kill the mujahedeen hero Ahmad Shah Massood. Five years after the Taliban opponent was slain by a bomb hidden in the camera, a former Taliban official on Saturday described how Al Qaeda staged the killing — two days before the Sept. 11 attack on America — hoping to strike a fatal blow to the pro-US Northern Alliance. Waheed Mozhdah, director of the then-Taliban Foreign Ministry’s Middle East and Africa department, also showed The Associated Press a copy of what he said was a signed letter dated Sept 13, 2001, from bin Laden to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, urging him to launch an offensive against the alliance. In the letter, written in Arabic, bin Laden said that if America failed to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks, it would decline as a superpower. But if the US started fighting, he added, its economy would suffer a major blow and it would face the same destiny as the Soviet Union — whose ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan heralded its disintegration. Few details have emerged previously about how Al Qaeda plotted to murder Massood, the “Lion of Panjshir” who fought Soviet troops and led resistance to the Taliban regime. At the time, his Northern Alliance was under siege, barely clinging to a mountainous northern corner of the country. But the US military campaign after Sept. 11 to punish the Taliban for giving refuge to bin Laden propelled Massood’s supporters to power and the bearded commander has achieved iconic status. Giant portraits of him adorn government offices and public spaces in Kabul, and the Sept. 9 anniversary of his death is marked in grand style. The attackers apparently were North African Arabs traveling on forged Belgian passports who managed to pass through the front line between the warring Taliban and Northern Alliance carrying their bomb. One of the Arabs died in the bombing. The other, who survived the blast, was shot dead by enraged bodyguards.

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Afghanistan

Rabbani backs Qanooni for speaker of Afghan House

2005-12-21

Less than 24 hours after inauguration Afghanistan's parliament faces its first challenge with today's election of Speaker. Former president Sibgatullah Mojadeddi was yesterday elected as chairman of the Upper House, the Senate. Sibgatullah is one of those ineffectual guys that everybody can agree on because he doesn't have a mob... But today's contest pits former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, backing failed presidential candidate Younus Qanooni against dreaded Pashtun leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. I'd go with Qanooni without hesitation if I was Karzai. Rasool Sayyaf is a creature of the Saudis, a slippery deal maker who'd sell out his Mom and probably give a discount. Qanooni did a right fine job as interior minister during the transition period. He was a follower of Masood, and I think he's a man of caliber in his own right. His disadvantage in politix is being a Tadjik. In a race already marred by charges of vote buying at $600 a vote, factions have forged new alliances that shed ethnic differences for political gain. Sayyaf is accused by rights groups of human rights violations in the civil war that followed the end of the 10-year Soviet occupation in 1989. In this case they're right... Abdul Sayyaf's comrade is former Qanooni ally, Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, the fierce Hazara leader who heads Hizb-e-Wahdat, with whom Abdul Sayyaf's forces once clashed. Like Sayyaf, he is accused of rights abuses during the 1992-96 civil war that killed 50,000 people in Kabul. Mohaqiq leads a Shia faction. I can't see him getting along really well with Rasool's Salafists. But I believe Iran owns him, so maybe that accounts for it. Qanooni won over Ahmad Shah Massood's faction and Uzbek strongman Rashid Dostum. The mujahideen hero, married to a Pashtun, hopes to woo Pashtuns, former mujahideen and first time women lawmakers. Shukria Barakzai, one of 68 women parliamentarians could eat into his vote. She's a Pashtun, I believe, but she's a female, which makes her a Pashtun of little consequence. And she's closest thing Afghanistan has to emancipated wimmin, so I'd guess she's a place-holder... Karzai, informed sources say, chose to back Sayyaf over Rabbani after US prodding. My guess would be that's the Soddies, working through tame undersecretaries in our State Department. Being generous, we'll say they don't know any better. It's for sure they weren't paying any attention in the 80s, assuming they were around then. He must find a way of circumventing Abdul Sayyaf's war crimes record, projecting the Paghman chief's Pashtun credentials. Karzai will draw on support from "Pashtuns, independents, democratic intellectuals, women, former communists and Taliban", said analyst Neik Mohammad Kabuli of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Kabul. Analysts say the Abdul Sayyaf versus Qanooni contest pits Pashtuns, who make up 50 per cent of the population, against a coalition of minorities. Who make up the other, more savory, 50 percent.

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Afghanistan

Afghans remember assassinated leader

2003-09-11

Hundreds of top Afghan political and military figures gathered in the Panjshir Valley on Wednesday to mark an anniversary many link with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Two days before the jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania, a suicide bomber in Afghanistan killed Ahmad Shah Massood. Massood was a revered warrior and avowed enemy of the Taliban regime. Massood, the leader of the Northern Alliance, was known as the Lion of Panjshir. He was killed by an assassin posing as a journalist who planted a bomb inside a camera that detonated during a Sept. 9, 2001, interview. It’s believed his killing was the work of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and aimed at eliminating a key enemy just before the attacks on the U.S. The pilgrimage to Massood’s tomb followed a larger memorial service held Tuesday that attracted more than 1,500 people to Massood’s domed, hilltop mausoleum in the Panjshir Valley, about 150 kilometres north of Kabul.

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Afghanistan

Gul Agha Dies From Gunshots Meant For Karzai?

2002-09-07

In a phone call with the Mujahideen inside Afghanistan in the city of Kandahar, they confirmed that the assassination attempt on the Afghan President Karzai in Kandahar on Thursday was carried out by the Mujahideen as they came to know about the date of Karzai’s visit to the city and thus prepared for this important event. Prepared in the way Islamists know best... However the first information concerning the results of this attack was not clear regarding Karzai. Yet the Mujahideen inside Afghanistan confirmed that there is very strong almost sure information that the ruler of Kandahar Gul Agha died subsequently due to the attack — a matter the media still doesn’t disclose or report about. If they got Gul Agha, it's no great loss, but this could just be Muj rumor. The information on Karzai still isn't clear... That might have been him saying he was alive, but he coulda been lying. If they got Gul Agha, maybe they got him, too. In fact, they probably got lotsa people. In fact, I think they got me, too... Ow. That hurts. According to these (Mujahideen) sources the death of Gul Agha in this incident was not revealed due to fears of its results on the public opinion inside and outside Afghanistan. If he has kicked it, the Karzai guys should be trumpeting it, flags a half mast, public mourning, the whole shebang. He'd make a heck of a lot better martyr than he does a governor of Kandahar... The Mujahideen compared the assassination of Gul Agha with the killing of Ahmad Shah Massood as he was killed on spot by two Arab Mujahideen. However the Northern Alliance at that time didn’t make public this event and stated that he was only injured in this incident and that he was being medicated. It was only after some days and under pressure from the media that the Northern Alliance confirmed the death of their leader in that attack which was carried out by the Arab Mujahideen just a few days before the September 11th attacks. Except that Masood was the heart of the Northern Alliance. Nobody gives a fert about Gul Agha, except for Gul Agha and maybe his Mom... UPDATE: Karzai's on FoxNews, talking about the assassination attempt. But it's probably just a computer simulation. We do that all the time, y'know...

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