Posted on 03/23/2004 2:02:42 PM PST by knighthawk
SYDNEY - The French authorities have told Australia that a suspected terrorist now in a Parisian jail spent months in Sydney helping to prepare an attack 'of great size' on the country, The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday.
The suspect, Willie Brigitte, was deported from Australia to France in October and allegedly had links to the terrorist groups which carried out the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and the March 11 Madrid train bombings.
The dossier was reportedly drawn up by French anti-terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere as part of a request for assistance from the Australian authorities.
In it, French investigators said Brigitte had worked with an 'informal' terrorist cell operating in a Sydney area with a big Muslim population and linked to the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Among his tasks, Brigitte, 35, was supposed to help a Chechen explosives expert who was to sneak into the country last October during the rugby World Cup posing as a supporter of the Georgian team.
The Chechen, identified only as Abu Salah, was twice denied a visa by the Australian authorities.
Brigitte's main contacts in Sydney were a man know as Abu Hamza and the cleric of a western Sydney mosque who allegedly has links to Al-Qaeda figures in Europe and the US state of Virginia.
'Brigitte said that the Lashkar group based in Australia and created around Hamza was, with the assistance of this Chechen expert in explosives...to prepare a terrorist act of great size in Australia,' the French dossier was quoted as saying.
It said potential targets for attack included a US electronic listening post at Pine Gap in central Australia, military bases and the country's only nuclear reactor in Sydney, and the western city of Perth.
This isn't the same one-eyed guy from the UK, is it? If not, these guys have got to rent some new names so we can keep them all straight.
Actually, better yet, take a lesson from the Israelis.
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