Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

India-Pakistan

Paris attacker linked to Mumbai 26/11 strikes reveals new documentary

2021-06-24

[OneIndia] A new documentary has spoken about the involvement of the Gay Paree attack conspirator Muhammad Ghani Usman

...who is not in the Rantburg archives with that spelling...

, a Pak national and Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorist in the planning and execution of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks.

Usman is currently is in a jail in La Belle France after being arrested in connection with the Gay Paree attack in 2015. The documentary aired by German broadcaster DW aims to find out the financing, planning and commissioning of terror attacks in Europe.

Quoting London based security analyst, Sajjan Gohel, the documentary says, " this man was a key member of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba. It is believed that he was a part of the operations planning for the attacks in Mumbai in 2008. Yet, nothing was done."

It may be recalled that Usman was questioned by the NIA in 2019. The NIA learnt that Usman was in touch with David Headley, the man who conducted the reconnaissance for the 26/11 attacks.

Further the documentary speaks about the major conspiracies hatched by the turbans and also reveals the name of Sajid Mir. "Suspects in the US confirm the existence of Sajid Mir and his role in recruiting and indoctrinating westerners with an aim of sending them back to Europa
Europa

...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
or the US to carry out attacks in the name of LeT," the documentary said while quoting Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a former French investigative judge, anti-terrorism.

Link

India-Pakistan

Families of Frenchmen killed in Pakistan attack sue judge

2011-06-16

[Dawn] Relatives of Frenchies killed in a 2002 bombing in Pakistain are suing a judge who probed the case, their lawyer said Wednesday, alleging it was falsely framed as a suicide kaboom.
"Yeah! It wuz somethin' else!"
They lodged a complaint alleging that the judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, had ignored an autopsy on the suspected bomber which they say cast doubt on claims that he drove a vehicle packed with explosives, said the lawyer, Olivier Morice.

"All these years, real disinformation has been orchestrated in order to make people believe that this attack was carried out as a suicide kaboom," he said.

The ongoing probe, now under the supervision of a different judge, centres on allegations that the attack was Dire Revenge™ for the cancellation of kickbacks promised to officials involved in the sale of French submarines to Pakistain.

The bombing in Bloody Karachi in 2002 killed 11 French engineers working for the French state company that built the submarines and at least three Paks.

The complex case has implicated President Nicolas Sarkozy,
...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit...
who was budget minister at the time. He has denied any involvement.

The victims' families have accused officials of trying to bury the affair.

Their latest suit accuses Bruguiere, who led the French judicial investigation into the bombing from 2002 to 2007, of false testimony and obstructing justice.

They have already brought a manslaughter suit against former president Jacques Chirac, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin
... who may not be a woman ...
and executives involved in the arms deals, and have called for Sarkozy to be questioned.

Judges have also been investigating whether money paid in commissions ended up being channelled to fund political activities in La Belle France. Witnesses have told Sherlocks Sarkozy approved the commissions as budget minister at the time.

Sarkozy has dismissed the claims as a "fairytale."

Link

India-Pakistan

CIA winked at Pak Army training camps for LT: Paris

2009-11-14

[The News (Pak) Top Stories] Pakistan's army once ran training camps for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT) militant group with the apparent knowledge of the CIA, an example of complicity that raises questions about the current state of the nuclear-armed nation. So says former French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, author of a new book that provides rare insight both into alleged past army support for the defunct Lashkar-e-Taiba and to the group's connections to a global network linked to al-Qaeda.

The question of Pakistani military support for Islamist militants is crucial for the United States as it tries to work out how to stabilise the country and neighbouring Afghanistan.Bruguiere bases the information in his book on international terrorism, "Ce que je n'ai pas pu dire" ("What I could not say") on testimony given by jailed Frenchman Willy Brigitte, who spent 2-1/2 months in a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in 2001-02.

In an interview, Bruguiere said he was convinced Lashkar-e-Taiba, first set up to fight India in its part of the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, had become part of an international network tied to al-Qaeda. "Lashkar-e-Taiba is no longer a Pakistani movement with only a Kashmir political or military agenda. Lashkar-e-Taiba is a member of al-Qaeda. Lashkar-e-Taiba has decided to expand violence worldwide," he told Reuters.
That's pretty much a given, isn't it? They provide training facilities and cadres for al-Qaeda. Three of them were arrested in Bangla in today's news plotting and kaboom the U.S. embassy in Dhaka in an expression of the Bangla people's outrage at our existence...
He was "very, very anxious about the situation" in Pakistan, where militants are staging a series of bloody urban attacks to avenge a government offensive against their strongholds. "The problem right now is to know if the Pakistanis have sufficient power to control the situation," he said.
They don't. If they change their ways they might in the future, but they're not really changing their ways. They're trying to go after the Pak Taliban but not the al-Qaeda infrastructure or the Afghan Taliban infrastructure in Balochistan and North Wazoo.
The problem was also "to know if all the members of the military forces and the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence agency) are playing the same game. I am not sure," he added.
I'm sure they're not, and I'm also sure that the ones who aren't are not "rogue."
Pakistan has long been accused of giving covert support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was blamed for last year's attack on Mumbai in which 166 people were killed. It denies the allegation and has banned the organisation.
But Hafiz Saeed isn't in jug, the charges against him were dropped and he never did more than house arrest. Pak military trainers provided training and logistical assistance the the Mumbai killers. And LeT is about as "defunct" as I am, maybe less so.
New form of terrorism: Bruguiere said he became aware of the changing nature of international terrorism while investigating attacks in Paris in the mid-1990s by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA). These included an attempt to hijack a plane from Algiers to Paris in 1994 and crash it into the Eiffel Tower -- a forerunner of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. The plane was diverted to Marseilles and stormed by French security forces.

This new style of international terrorism was quite unlike militant groups he had investigated in the past, with their pyramidal structures and political objectives. "After 1994/1995, like viruses, all the groups have been spreading on a very large scale all over the world, in a horizontal way and even a random way," he said.
It doesn't cost much to be a terrorist. The November 14th-Red Brigades-Baader Meinhof model works perfectly well for small-scale operations, and even big blow-outs like killing Aldo Moro, if you're willing to take the casualties. Note that Jemaah Islamiyah, for instance, was effectively wiped out after the Bali bombings.
An early encounter with Lashkar-e-Taiba came while he was investigating shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who tried to set off explosives on a transatlantic flight from Paris in 2001. This investigation led to a man, who Bruguiere said was the Lashkar-e-Taiba's representative in Paris, and who was suspected of helping Reid -- an accusation he denied. Bruguiere said the link to Reid was not proved in court.

"Willie Brigitte quickly understood that Sajid Mir belonged to the regular Pakistan army. The Toyota pick-up which took them to the training camp passed through four army checkpoints without being stopped."

Brigitte, a Frenchman originally from France's Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, had gone to Pakistan shortly after Sept 11 to try to reach Afghanistan. Unable to make it, he had been sent to a Lashkar centre outside Lahore. A man named Sajid Mir became his handler. "He quickly understood that Sajid belonged to the regular Pakistan army," wrote Bruguiere. After 1-1/2 months, he was taken with four other trainees, two British and two Americans, to a Lashkar camp in the hills in Punjab province. The Toyota pick-up which took them there passed through four army checkpoints without being stopped.

During his 2-1/2 months stay at the camp, Bruguiere says, Brigitte realised the instructors were soldiers on detachment. Military supplies were dropped by army helicopters. Brigitte said he and other foreigners were forced four times to leave the camp and move further up into the hills to avoid being caught by CIA officers. They were believed to be checking if Pakistan had kept to a deal under which the Americans turned a blind eye to Lashkar camps in Punjab provided no foreigners were trained there. In return, Bruguiere said, Pakistan under then president Pervez Musharraf helped track down leaders of al-Qaeda.

Double standards: Western countries were at the time accused by India of double standards in tolerating Pakistani support for Kashmir-focused organisations while pushing it to crack down on militant groups which threatened Western interests. Diplomats say that attitude has since changed, particularly after bombings in London in 2005 highlighted the risks of "home-grown terrorism" in Britain linked to militant groups based in Pakistan's Punjab province.

After leaving the camp accompanied by Sajid, Brigitte was sent back to France. Sajid then ordered him to fly to Australia where he joined a cell later accused of plotting attacks there. Tipped off by French police, Brigitte was deported from Australia in 2003 and convicted by a French court of links to terrorism.

Bruguiere said he had personally questioned Brigitte in the presence of his lawyer to check his testimony. Information provided by Brigitte was also crosschecked by French police based on mobile phone and e-mail traffic. Bruguiere went to Pakistan himself in 2006 as part of his investigations into the deaths of 11 Frenchmen in a bombing outside a hotel in Karachi in 2002. He stepped down as France's best-known counter-terrorism expert in 2007 and now represents the EU on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme in Washington.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

France had 'active role in genocide'

2008-08-05

FRANCE played an active role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, a report unveiled today by the Rwandan government said, naming French political and military officials it says should be prosecuted. "French forces directly assassinated Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis... French forces committed several rapes on Tutsi survivors," said a justice ministry statement released after the report was presented in Kigali.

This isn't pegging my "likely" meter...

The 500-page report alleged that France was aware of preparations for the genocide,

Perhaps...

contributed to planning the massacres

To what end?

and actively took part in the killing.

For sheer love of the sight of blood? Does... not... compute, unless the Frenchies were flat out nutz.

It named former French prime minister Edouard Balladur, former foreign minister Alain Juppe and then-president Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, among 13 French politicians accused of playing a role in the massacres.

Much as I disliked Mitterrand, I can't see him raping Tutsi maidens for the fun of it. It wasn't his style. Not caring a fig whether somebody else did it was his style, but I can't see that as a crime.

The report also names 20 military officials as being responsible. "Considering the seriousness of the alleged crimes, the Rwandan government has urged the relevant authorities to bring the accused French politicians and military officials to justice," the statement said.

I wouldn't expect to see much in the way of hard evidence.

The 1994 genocide in the central African nation left around 800,000 people - mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus - dead, according to the United Nations. Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama presented the report to the press in Kigali, more than two years after a special commission tasked with probing France's role in the genocide began its work.

The statement said the military and humanitarian Operation Turquoise carried out by the French in Rwanda between June and August 1994 abetted the killings perpetrated by the extremist Interahamwe Hutu militia. The French military "did not challenge the infrastructure of genocide, notably the checkpoints manned by the Interahamwes."

"They clearly requested that the Interahamwes contine to man those checkpoints and kill Tutsis attempting to flee," the statement said.

The release of the report comes against a backdrop of tense relations between France and Rwanda. In November 2006, Kigali severed diplomatic ties with France after French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere accused Kagame of involvement in the death of the then president, Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu. Habyarimana's plane was shot down above Kigali airport on April 6, 1994, sparking the genocide.

Link

Europe

Anti-terrorist judge defeated in French elections

2007-06-18

Damn.

Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who for many years was France's leading anti-terrorist judge, failed Sunday in his bid to win a parliamentary seat for the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Bruguiere was beaten by the Socialist candidate in a constituency in the Lot-et-Garonne department of southern France. Seen as close to President Nicolas Sarkozy, Bruguiere left his magistrate's job earlier this year and had hoped to embark on a career in poltics.

Link

Europe

'Carlos the Jackal' faces new trial for French bomb attacks

2007-05-04

PARIS (AFP) - The convicted Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal is to stand trial for a wave of 1980s bomb attacks in France that left 11 dead, legal officials said Friday. The Marxist-Leninist radical, who once boasted that his plots had killed more than 1,500 people, is already serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder of two French policemen and an alleged police informer.

Top French anti-terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere has now ordered him to stand trial for "complicity in killings and destruction of property using explosive substances" in relation to four bombings in France in 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 and injured more than 100 people, officials said. The charge sheet against Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, says the attacks were part of a "private war" waged by Carlos against France to try to obtain the release of two members of his gang who were arrested as they prepared an attack on the Kuwaiti embassy in Paris.

The charges relate to attacks on a train travelling from Paris to the southwestern city of Toulouse that left five dead; on the Paris office of the Arabic-language Al Watan magazine that killed one; on the Saint-Charles train station in the Mediterranean city of Marseille that killed two; and on a high-speed TGV train that killed three. The Paris-Toulouse train line was frequently used at the time by Jacques Chirac, France's outgoing rightwing president who was then mayor of Paris. According to Hungarian and East German archives cited in the case, Chirac was the target in the attack on that line. But attempting to assassinate Chirac is not one of the charges being laid against Carlos in this case, and he was not on the train when the bomb went off. Three other people, Christa Margot Frohlich, Ali Al Issawi and Johannes Weinrich, have also been ordered to stand trial in the case. Weinrich is currently serving a prison term in Germany. It was not immediately clear where the two others were. The trial is unlikely to start before next year.

Carlos, 57, rose to infamy in 1975 when he took 11 ministers hostage from the powerful OPEC oil cartel.
There's a pic of him at the link. He looks a lot older then 57.
His commando group burst into the conference room where the OPEC ministers and their staff were meeting in Vienna, killing a Libyan delegate, an Austrian policeman and an Iraqi bodyguard. Saying he was acting for the "Arm of the Arab Revolution," a previously unknown group, Carlos demanded the broadcast of a text condemning Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the oil monarchies of the Gulf and then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The siege at OPEC headquarters went on until the following morning, when Carlos's team took a DC-9 plane supplied by Austrian authorities to fly towards Algiers with 40 hostages.

After two decades on the run, Carlos was finally captured in Khartoum in 1994 by French secret service agents acting with the help of the Sudanese government. He is serving his life sentence in Clairvaux prison in eastern France.

Link

Europe

Seventeen suspected Tamils detained in ... Paris

2007-04-03

Seventeen suspected members of the Tamil Tigers rebel group were detained Sunday in Paris during an investigation into terrorist financing activities, sources close to the case said. Police made the arrests under the direction of anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the sources said.

The suspects are alleged to be involved in extortion, violence and detentions as part of fundraising activities for the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who are fighting a separatist war in Sri Lanka. The Tigers were put on the EU terrorist list in May last year.

Those detained are suspected of having raised six million euros (eight million dollars) in France last year. Families were required to send 2,000 euros (2,700 dollars) per year to the organisation, and merchants had to pay up to 6,000 euros, sources said. Those who did not pay were threatened or detained, they said. Those in charge of raising the money were allowed to keep 20 percent as payment, the sources said. The Tamil community in France includes about 70,000 people.

Link

Europe

'Australia terror plotter' jailed

2007-03-15

A French national suspected of plotting terror attacks in Australia has been found guilty of links to terror groups. Willie Brigitte, from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, was sentenced to nine years in jail by a Paris court. He was arrested in Australia in 2003 and deported to France to stand trial on a charge of "criminal conspiracy in relation with a terrorist enterprise".

Brigitte, 38, was accused in court of plotting to blow up Australia's only nuclear research power station. The Frenchman, who declined to speak during the trial, had previously denied any plans for an attack in Australia. His lawyers are said to be considering an appeal. A state prosecutor had requested the maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment, saying Brigitte had played a major role in the alleged attack plan.

Lucas Heights nuclear facility was a potential target, prosecutors said
Australia's only nuclear research power station, in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights, was one of several potential targets cited by prosecutors. Brigitte was also accused of plotting to attack a US-Australian electronic intelligence surveillance station at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, and military bases across the country. France's top anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, accused Brigitte of setting up a terror cell in Australia in alliance with the Pakistani Islamic militant group, Lashkar-e-Toiba. Lashkar-e-Toiba was banned in Australia in November 2003, a month after Brigitte was deported for immigration offences.

Brigitte's lawyer, Jean-Claude Durimel, told reporters he was considering an appeal but needed to discuss matters with his client, AFP news agency reports.
"The sentence is grotesque," said Harry Durimel, who also represented Brigitte, describing the trial as a "witch-hunt" based on no evidence.

Brigitte, who converted to Islam in 1998, first attracted the attention of French intelligence that year after he travelled to Yemen to attend a Koranic school. He is accused of running forest training camps in France for would-be Islamic militants, and is thought to have undergone combat training in Pakistan after 9/11. He moved to Australia in May 2003 and subsequently married an Australian Muslim convert, a former army signaller. He has been portrayed in Australia as the country's most dangerous link with al-Qaeda.

Link

Africa North

French judge: "Arc of radical Islamism" in north Africa

2007-03-15

Extremist groups in north Africa are being merged into an "arc of radical Islamism" under the leadership of the main Algerian Islamist organisation, France's top anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere said Wednesday.

In an interview with AFP, Bruguiere recalled that the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) recently changed its name -- under orders, it said, from Osama bin Laden -- to the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Lands of Islamic North Africa. "What does that name mean? It emphasises allegiance to Al-Qaeda and shows a clear desire to regionalise the organisation. It is unprecedented," Bruguiere said. "This is our major cause for concern because it is clear there is a direct threat to France. France is the priority target. We need to adapt, as we have in the past, to this new type of threat. "All the ingredients are there. The ex-GSPC wants to incorporate all the radical movements in north Africa -- the Libyan, Moroccan and Tunisian Islamic Combat Groups (GIC). There is an Islamist arc, which also has plans for the south -- the Sahel," he said.

Bruguiere said Sunday's suicide bombing in Casablanca, which left three people wounded, "was an operation that should have taken place somewhere else. It is the visible element in a situation that is much more serious, which does not just concern Morocco."

From the indispensible Jihad Watch: The real target had been Casablanca's police and paramilitary headquarters, restaurants and hotels

"Operationally we know that since the start of 2004 there have been links between these different movements, men moving from one country to another. All of it is being piloted by the ex-GSPC," the judge said.

Bruguiere, 63, who has led investigations into terrorism cases since 1982, is widely expected to retire this year and run for the National Assembly as a member of the ruling centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).

Good luck, Your Honor. Get someone else to start your car for you every morning, 'k?

Link

Europe

Bruguiere says radical Islamist threat in Europe is increasing

2007-02-15

The risk of terror attacks in Europe is high and is increasing, France's leading anti-terrorism judge said, warning that a recent alliance between al-Qaida and a North African terrorist group poses a grave threat.

The Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, staged seven nearly simultaneous attacks in Algeria on Tuesday, targeting police in several towns east of Algiers, killing six and injuring around 30, according to officials, police and hospital staff. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, the new name for the GSPC, claimed responsibility for the strikes. "The GSPC wants to carry out attacks in Europe, especially in France, Italy and Spain, and destabilize North Africa," Jean-Louis Bruguiere told The Associated Press on Tuesday night in New York.

French counterterrorism police arrested 11 suspects as part of efforts aimed at dismantling an alleged al-Qaida-linked recruiting network to send radical Islamic fighters to Iraq, police officials said Wednesday. Nine suspects were detained in and near the southern city of Toulouse before dawn Wednesday, following the arrest of two others late Tuesday at Paris' Orly airport, police said. The two had been sent home by Syrian authorities, investigators said. Bruguiere said the threat to Europe is "pretty high." France rates four on a scale of one to five, he said

He linked the increased threat level to the U.S.-led war on Iraq. "Actors of jihad have become radicalized and have tried to demonstrate that their means have not been diminished since September 11," he said.

As Western countries have developed new measures to fight attacks by Islamic radicals, the terrorists have also come up with a strategy to fight globally, he said. Despite the growing danger of further Islamist strikes in Europe, there have also been successes in anti-terrorism efforts. An attempted attack by GSPC in France was foiled by domestic counterterrorism groups, and the French government is cautiously monitoring the group's activities, Bruguiere said. European countries are working closely together to prevent further attacks and international cooperation. He said that cooperation with the United States in particular has improved significantly in recent years.

Link

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.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

Rwanda rejects calls to indict president

2006-11-21

This is rich, given official France's aid and support to the genociders, before, during and after... and the still ongoing propaganda war waged by the quay d'orsay, "Marianne" or "Le Monde" (french rags) to absolve France by claiming there was a "double-genocide", and that the hutus french clients were no more to blame than the tutsis.
Rwanda rejected calls by a French judge to indict President Paul Kagame over his alleged involvement in the death of the country's former leader. "The allegations are totally unfounded. The judge is acting on the basis of gossip and rumours," Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said.

Karugarama accused the judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, of playing political games over the allegations that will further worsen the already frosty relations between Kigali and Paris. "These are political games rather than a judicial process," he said.

On Monday, Bruguiere said Kagame should face prosecution before the international war crimes court in Tanzania because of his "suspected involvement" in the death of then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.

But Rwanda has accused France of abetting the genocide, in which around 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were slaughtered by Hutu extremists during a 100-day killing spree between April and July 1994. Paris has adamantly denied the allegation but Kigali has charged a commission with determining whether there is evidence to file a suit against France for damages at the world court.

The Rwandan minister said his government would not respond to Bruguiere's allegations by seeking to indict French President Jacques Chirac over the genocide. Kigali would not be dragged into "a sad situation where we would also engage in similar games by indicting (President Jacques) Chirac or other senior French officials," he said.

Bruguiere said Kagame should be arraigned before the Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which is currently hearing the case of several former high-ranking Rwandan army officers accused of genocide. Formed in late 1994, the court has so far tried 31 suspects, convicting 26 and acquitting five. Twenty-five trials are now in progress, with 12 awaiting their start.

The tribunal last month rejected a request to consider an earlier account from Bruguiere into the killing of Habyarimana which reportedly named Kagame as the main decision-maker behind the April 6, 1994 attack in which Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed. Habyarimana's aircraft was shot down and his death sparked off the mass slaughter. Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira and a four-man French crew were also killed in the crash.

Kagame, who headed the Tutsi rebel force that took power in Kigali in July 1994, ending the genocide, has always denied any involvement in the attack on the aircraft carrying Habyarimana.

Link

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