A Paris court on Thursday heard evidence that French Muslim convert Willie Brigitte was sent to Australia to plot a terrorist attack on the orders of Pakistani extremists.Brigitte, a 38-year-old from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, is charged with conspiring to stage a terrorist attack at a Sydney nuclear plant in Australia in 2003. On the second day of the trial, judge Jacqueline Rebeyrotte said investigators had tracked a flurry of telephone calls between Brigitte and two Pakistani extremists in the days before he left for Australia.
Brigitte reportedly spoke to Sajid Mir, a Pakistan-based operative for the radical Lashkar-e-Taiba and Shahzad Ashraf, who has been arrested in Britain on terrorism charges. One of the men is said to have asked during a recorded telephone conversation “How is our French connection project?” in reference to Brigitte, the judge said. At the opening of the trial on Monday, Brigitte protested his innocence and said he had lost “all faith in the French judiciary”.