Free Republic

Paris court convicts three aides to shoebomber ReidA top French court jailed three men for terrorist conspiracy on Thursday after finding them guilty of helping "shoebomber" Richard Reid, who narrowly failed to destroy a U.S. airliner over the Atlantic. (snip) Jacqueline Rebeyrotte, presiding judge at the main Paris criminal court, sentenced Ghulam Rama to five years in prison and expulsion from France once his sentence was served. (snip) His co-accused, Frenchmen Hakim Mokhfi and Hassan El Cheguer, both aged 31, were each jailed for four years, one year suspended. The court ordered them released as they have been in preventive...

French anti-terror magistrates wrapped up an investigation into four Islamists who may have helped British shoe bomber Richard Reid in France. Le Parisien reports the suspects include the head of a Paris mosque, the leader of a Pakistani community and two other men. Reid spent several days in Paris before boarding a Miami-bound plane in December 2001 with explosives stuffed in his sneakers. Last year, Reid was sentenced to life in prison by a U.S. court for trying to blow up the flight. One of the French suspects, Imam Kamel Lakhram, reportedly acknowledged to French authorities Reid had slept at...

Brigitte spills beans on Aussie terror plan Ben English 18oct04 WILLIE Brigitte has told French investigators of his extraordinary journey from failed butcher to linchpin in an al-Qaida plan to launch a terror attack on Australia. He has detailed the high-altitude paramilitary training he undertook in a vast camp overlooking the Himalaya in which he and thousands of other jihad warriors were schooled in terrorism. And he has told of how Osama bin Laden's allies have penetrated the Pakistani Army to thwart US efforts to crack terrorist training operations in the remote Pakistani mountain regions that border Afghanistan. A year...