Frenchman with alleged Al-Qaeda link hid in Japan after 9/11

AFP ^ | 5.19.04

[ambrose]

Time is GMT + 8 hours

Posted: 19 May 2004 1330 hrs

Frenchman with alleged Al-Qaeda link hid in Japan after 9/11

TOKYO: A Frenchman allegedly linked to the Al-Qaeda network hid in Japan for about a year after the September 11 attacks, suggesting the existence of terror-linked networks here, according to press reports.

Japanese police suspect that Lionel Dumont, 33, was involved in raising money and forming a terrorist network in Japan, all major papers including Japan's top-selling daily Yomiuri Shimbun said, quoting unnamed police sources.

Kyodo News agency said Dumont belonged to Al-Qaeda's logistics arm and Japanese authorities were shocked to learn that the country could have become "a breeding ground for terrorist acts."

Spokesmen for the Public Safety Commission which deals with terrorist threats in Japan, the police in Niigata, where Dumont was reported to have stayed, and the National Police Agency all declined to comment on the reports.

It was the first time that Japanese authorities have found evidence of a Japanese network centering around a suspected Al-Qaeda member, Kyodo said.

The Frenchman came to Japan in July 2002 after the World Cup finals on a false passport despite the country's stepped-up immigration measures after the September 11 attacks, it said.

It was the first time that a suspected Al-Qaeda member had entered Japan after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States, the papers said.

While in Japan, Dumont and his German wife stayed in Niigata, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Tokyo, working for a used-car dealership run by a Pakistani, the Asahi Shimbun said.

Police also learned the Frenchman was constantly making phone calls to several Iranians and Pakistanis in Tokyo and neighboring Kanagawa prefecture, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

Since July 2002, Dumont made at least four trips to Japan until he left the country in September 2003, the Asahi and Yomiuri said.

Kyodo said Dumont went to Malaysia from Japan.

Dumont was arrested in Germany in December 2003 for criminal offences unrelated to terrorism and is being held pending a decision on an extradition request by France, where, in 2001, he was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for armed robbery.

After dropping out of university, Dumont converted to Islam in 1993 and fought for the Mujahadeen alongside the Bosnian army in Bosnia-Hercogovina.

He returned to France and is suspected of forming the "Roubaix Gang" in 1995 which carried out armed robberies to raise funds for the Islamist cause until it was broken up by a police raid in which Dumont evaded capture and disappeared.

In September 2001, Japanese media reported that a foreign intelligence agency had alerted Tokyo that 19 foreign Islamic extremists believed to be Arabs and followers of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden might have entered the country from Pakistan shortly before the September 11 attacks.

- AFP

[Robert_Paulson2]

I guess we could say that his conversion to Islam, turned his life around... and gave him new purpose.

Such a great faith.
1.2 billion strong.

[Cindy]

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[Cindy]

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