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| Europe |
| Brigitte in court for nuclear plot |
| 2007-02-06 |
| A FRENCH Muslim convert suspected of plotting to attack an Australian nuclear power station goes on trial on terrorism charges in a Paris court today. Willy Brigitte faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of association with criminals involved in a terrorist enterprise by the main Paris criminal court. Prosecutors allege Brigitte, 38, and Sajid Mir, his co-accused who will be tried in absentia, considered targeting a nuclear power station or another high-profile facility near Sydney. "He will plead his innocence," Brigitte's lawyer Jean-Claude Durimel said. "He denies being a terrorist, a potential terrorist, or having prepared any attack whatsoever or wheresoever." Brigitte has spent almost 3-1/2 years in preventive detention since he was extradited to France in October 2003 following his arrest in Australia. The case against Brigitte is based on documents found at his Sydney home, an investigation by Australian authorities into suspects linked to the Frenchman and testimony to French police by an Islamic militant, who later withdrew his allegations. Australia's chief spy said Brigitte had been "almost certainly involved" in activities aimed at harming the country. Australia has been targeted by militant Islamic groups because of its role alongside US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Group of campers" At the time of his arrest, Brigitte was working in a local restaurant and was married to Melanie Brown, a former Australian soldier and also a convert to Islam. Brigitte, who comes from the French Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe, told French police he had gone to Australia to rebuild his life after turning his back on radical Islam. But Australian authorities said a search of his Sydney home produced documents linking him to Pakistani Islamic radicals recruiting volunteers to fight in Kashmir, disputed by India and Pakistan. According to the French investigation, Brigitte travelled to Yemen in 1998 and 1999, and then to Pakistan, staying in fundamentalist religious centres. Back in France, they say he led the so-called "group of campers" that conducted military-style training in Fontainebleau Forest near Paris and the Normandy region in the late 1990s. Several members of the group were among those convicted in May 2005 of providing logistical support to the assassins of Ahmad Shad Masood, the leader of the Northern Alliance killed on the eve of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Two group members died fighting with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and a third was captured by U.S. forces and held without trial in the U.S. military jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #1 D ***ng, for a sec thought twas Bardot. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-02-06 23:30 |