Posted on 10/18/2004 10:30:11 AM PDT by Qaz_W
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 Himalayas in which he and thousands of jihad warriors were schooled in terrorism. 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 after the French national was captured in a western Sydney apartment with documents indicating he was planning to launch an attack on Australian targets, his interrogation transcripts can be revealed in detail for the first time.
The transcripts, obtained by The Advertiser, give a rare insight into how the networks of people prepared to join the Islamist jihad against the West function.
Brigitte told investigators the camp where he was trained in the use of explosives, small arms and terrorism tactics was a sophisticated three-tiered mountain complex close to the Indo-Pakistani border.
He was grouped with foreign recruits, including American and British citizens of Pakistani origin.
"There were between 2000 and 3000 mujahadins," Brigitte told French anti-terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere.
"I remember it was very impressive because we gathered every morning and shouted Allah Akbar (God is Great).
"What was more, the site was imposing since one could see the outline of the Himalayas."
The camp was run by Lashkar e Toiba – or Army of the Pure – an al-Qaida-affiliated terror network that emerged in the late 1980s from an insurgency campaign to wrest Kashmir from Indian control.
Brigitte said LET was filled with soldiers from the Pakistani Army whose moderate government has vowed to lead the battle against terrorism in this tribal and strife-torn region.
Brigitte said the Pakistani soldiers worked to sabotage efforts by the West to fight bin Laden and his allies.
"There was complete complicity between Lashkar e Toiba and the Pakistani Army," Brigitte said in a secret interrogation in the Paris judicial chambers of Mr Bruguiere on December 3 last year.
"Furthermore, the weapons were provided by the army. The munitions were brought in by night between the first and second levels (of the camp).
"There was everything – munitions, arms and food. We had the feeling that these weapons came from the Pakistani Army.
"There were American M16s, French FAMS, kalashnikovs and makarovs. All the identification numbers had been removed."
Brigitte said on several occasions he was ordered to remove any evidence of military activity. The camp leaders had been warned that a raid by a coalition of CIA agents and Pakistani soldiers was imminent.
"I can remember four raids by the Pakistani Army," Brigitte said. "They always asked the foreign volunteers, of whom I was one, to clean up the camp and particularly to collect the cartridge cases and cartridges.
"There were no more than 15 Pakistani soldiers who came to carry out these checks with the same number of Americans.
"We were told that they were CIA agents who had come to check for the presence of foreign mujahadins."
Brigitte stayed at the camp for six weeks before returning to Paris early in 2002.
His flatmate in Paris, Ibrahim Keita, said Brigitte had returned under orders to organise a sleeper cell there.
"Brigitte did explain to me he had been sent back to France in order to make contact with a certain number of people," Keita told Judge Bruguiere.
"They were individuals who had either already fought or who had taken training in camps like him, as I understood it."
Brigitte was acting under orders from his mentor at the LET camp, known as Sajid Abu Braa, a 30-year-old Pakistan Army soldier in charge of foreign recruits.
Abu Braa, who travelled with two personal bodyguards, was a close associate of the camp's leader, known only as Zakerahmane. In Afghanistan, he was bin Laden's right-hand man.
Keita said when Brigitte was in Australia, he contacted him to join him in an unspecified terrorist plot.
Brigitte was arrested at his Wiley Park flat on October 9. Officials found maps of Australian nuclear sites, and the Perth headquarters of Australia's elite SAS unit.
He was repatriated to France on October 17, where he remains imprisoned in Paris's Fleury Merogis Jail.
Hardly surprising from an army whose motto translates as, "Faith, Piety and JIHAD in the Way of Allah."
But, but, but, we were working with our Pakistani allies multilaterally! You mean, there are drawbacks to working with other countries rather than doing things unilaterally?
Hey,U two,Stick to the official line-Musharraf is an ally & the Pakis are America's most crucial buddies(Despite being the world's largest nuke proliferators)!!!!!!!!!! & I also have great pleasure in telling you that Pres Bush plans to announce a package to sell Pakistan new F-16s(reportedly with AMRAAMs)-even the French don't sell stuff to these wackos now.
Yes, indeed. We made official the declaration of Pakistan as a "major non-NATO" ally back in the summer, ignoring the reality that Islamabad is one assassination away from an openly radical Islamic government.
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