Suspect plotted attack in Sydney

The Australian ^ | November 23 2003 | Ben English

[knighthawk]

TERROR suspect Willie Brigitte told a fellow Muslim extremist he was planning to launch an attack in Australia, it emerged yesterday.

Judicial officials in Paris revealed Frenchman Ibrahim Keita had admitted Brigitte told him in a telephone conversation before he was captured in Sydney last month that he was organising an attack.

Keita, 37, was arrested in Paris on Monday for terrorist activities.

A highly placed legal source told The Sunday Telegraph Brigitte asked Keita to join the Australian operation as a driver. Brigitte did not specify the nature or time frame of the attack.

The revelation is the first independent testimony confirming that Brigitte was heading a terrorist operation in Sydney.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock yesterday said he could not comment on the specific detail of the reports while the investigation into Brigitte continued.

But he added: "It is quite clear this is a matter of concern. We are learning other things about Brigitte all the time. We are getting some good information out of Paris, ASIO is very happy.

"Our level of knowledge is growing."

Keita said Brigitte had been ordered by al-Qaeda terror chiefs in Pakistan in January 2002 to return to France to prepare for a "project".

On May 14 this year the Frenchman was on a flight to Australia. He was captured in Sydney on October 9, a fortnight after French authorities warned the Australian Government he posed a terrorist risk.

Keita has told the French counter intelligence agency, the DST, that he met Brigitte in 1998 at a recruitment camp for militant extremists.

He said Brigitte headed the camp, held in the Fontainebleau Forest near Paris.

The two shared a home in Paris in 1998 before Brigitte headed to Yemen to attend a "university". Prosecutors assert he was undertaking terror training there.

The two men have remained in touch ever since, with Keita rising in the terror network to the role of recruitment chief for Parisian jihad volunteers.

Keita also said Brigitte was an explosives expert. Brigitte has told interrogators he was asked by an al-Qaeda operative, known as Samir, to "receive" and accommodate an explosives expert while he was in Sydney.

The prosecution dossier on Brigitte, a former French marine born in the French Caribbean outpost of Guadaloupe, states he was organising a "paramilitary organisation" in Sydney.

Prosecutors said Brigitte had documents that indicated he was planning to recruit and train volunteers in Australia.

[knighthawk]

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