French investigators interrogating Willy Brigitte have established he had connections with the organisers of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre as well as the March 11 Madrid terror attacks. He has told them he was sent to Sydney to allegedly help a locally based terror group to "prepare a terrorist act of great size". Brigitte's "mission" was to look after an explosives expert from Chechnya who would be smuggled into Australia posing as a fan of the Georgian team in the Rugby World Cup.
But Keysar Trad, a spokesman for the Lebanese Australian Muslims Association, said Brigitte's alleged admissions to French counter-terrorism agents could have been the result of intense interrogation and drug use. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph today, Brigitte's Australian wife Melanie Brown said he had admitted to smoking marijuana "as a facade to trick Australian police".
| "Yeah! Like, that's why we dunnit, man! Just t'fool the coppers!" |
"Marijuana users escape into their imagination and have hallucinations," Mr Trad said. "His wife says he fools the cops uses marijuana regularly. We haven't seen anything to substantiate these allegations, but for someone who's a heavy marijuana user, you wonder whether he just couldn't work things out after the intense interrogation."
Earlier today, Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock said ASIO had neither confirmed nor denied it had launched a search for the Chechen explosive expert. "I can't comment on the status of ongoing inquiries. I can't confirm or deny the status of them," he said. Mr Ruddock said Australia was not about to adopt an approach like that in France where investigators routinely revealed details of their inquiries. "They (the French) have a different system which they operate which gives them different powers. "It may suit France's circumstances. It wouldn't be in our view helpful to pursue that approach here." Mr Ruddock said anyone seeking to recruit or train terrorists in Australia would be dealt with by the authorities.
Brigitte, now being held in Paris's Chateau d'If Fleury-Merogis prison, has told French investigators about alleged terrorist activities in Sydney by Australian-based terrorists. Australian and French authorities are trying to verify his statements. He has claimed a terror network - at least in an informal sense - is operating in western Sydney and is charged with recruiting people for jihad operations against non-Muslims. He has named several people and the man he claims is at the centre of the operation and who is believed by French investigators to be connected with some of the most notorious terrorists in the world. Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, the imam who presided over Brigitte's wedding to Melanie Brown last August, has been named as the chief recruiter of Australia's jihad network. In Sydney yesterday, Sheik Zoud denied he was the "chief recruiter". "I have no part in it," he said.
| "Nope. Nope. I'm just a simple holy man! Who y'gonna believe? Me? Or some guy in the calaboose?" |
In the dossier, Judge Bruguiere requests a joint investigation by the two countries into Brigitte and the foiled Sydney plot. Brigitte's terror network placed him in close contact with the leaders of the jihad against Jews and Western interests in France, Belgium, Britain, Spain, Australia and a dangerous terror cell in the US. He has also been linked to terror groups that organised the assassination of an Afghan commander. The dossier portrays him as a link figure in the world terror network with connections to groups behind the March 11 Madrid massacre and September 11. The French request to Australia says Brigitte's potential targets included Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, the Australian Army's administrative compound at Victoria Barracks and the Perth headquarters of Australia's SAS regiment. The French believe Brigitte was also targeting US military bases, the Pine Gap intelligence base and nuclear sites. He was found with a map of Australian and US military and nuclear installations. The dossier also lists the names of the people claimed by Brigitte to be leading figures of Sydney's Islamic terror network. At its heart is Sheik Zoud, the spiritual head of the Haldon St prayer hall that for the past year has been under surveillance by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
According to a request for judicial assistance from Australian authorities by French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, Sheik Zoud has connections with terror chiefs stretching from Virginia in the US to London and Madrid. In the request he is named as "the recruiter in Australia of volunteers for the jihad, operating from the Mousalla mosque of Lakemba". Sheik Zoud is said to have links to Abu Dahdah, the jailed kingpin of a Spanish terror cell alleged to have helped plan the September 11 attacks. Dahdah was also the mentor of Jamal Zougam, chief suspect in the Madrid train bombings that killed 202 people in Europe's worst terrorist atrocity earlier this month. CIA investigations into a major terror cell in Virginia have established Sheik Zoud was regularly in contact with the cell's alleged chief recruiter Ali Timimi. Brigitte's commander in the Sydney network is named as Faheem Khalid Lodhi, also known as Hamza. According to Judge Bruguiere's letter to his Australian judicial counterparts, Brigitte's job in Sydney was to harbour a Chechnyan explosives expert, believed to be Abu Salah. Brigitte met Salah during his jihad training at the Faisalabad, Pakistan terror camp of the al-Qaeda-linked extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba in September 2001. |