- Willie Brigitte
Willie Virgile Brigitte (born
10 October 1968 inPointe-à-Pitre ,Guadaloupe ) is a French convert toIslam who associated withal-Qaeda inPakistan and was possibly involved in a plot to conduct a terrorist operation inAustralia . [http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1841824.htm Brigitte terrorism trial nears] ABC News]French prosecutors called for Brigitte, currently in custody, to be sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for his admission of his involvement in a terrorist organization. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1844639.htm Brigitte 'pressured' over terrorism plot confession] ABC News]
Background
Brigitte was born on the Caribbean island of
Guadaloupe , an overseas territory of France. His father was an engineer and his mother worked as a pharmacist, and he grew up in Guadaloupe under relatively affluent circumstances. He moved toParis for his final year of schooling, but chose to join the navy instead of sitting for thebaccalaureate . He served for three years, having deserted the military twice.After returning to civilian life in 1993 he worked in a variety of jobs, and had stints as a butcher,
social worker , printer, drug rehabilitation facilitator, teacher and warehouse worker. Brigitte was briefly married to a Syrian Muslim woman, Chakoura al Soubai, with whom he had one child, but at the time neither of them were particularly religious.He read widely, including the
Qur'an , and at the age of thirty in 1998 he decided to embraceIslam in full. Brigitte adopted several new names including Mohammed Abderrahman, Mohammed Ibrahim Abderrahman, Abou Maimouna, Salahouddin, Jamal and 'Abderrahman the West Indian'. He attended an Islamic school inYemen .Recruited to Al Qaeda
Brigitte attended the Omar and Abou Bakr mosques in the poor and largely immigrant Paris
banlieue ofCouronnes , to study both Islam andArabic . The mosques was infamous for preaching a mixture of militant and puritanical Islamist dogma, infused with anti-imperialist and anti-Western sentiments. It was in Couronnes that Brigitte came in contact with persons with links to the Algerian-basedSalafist Group for Preaching and Combat . He was taken on oddly strenuous camping trips, believed by French intelligence to be designed by Islamist recruiters to identify suitable fighters. It is believed he helped procure twoBelgian passports that were used by the assassins who managed to get close to, and kill, AfghanNorthern Alliance warlordAhmed Shah Massoud .Brigitte married his second wife, N'Deye Sarr, a
Congo lese Muslim, in 1999. They had two daughters, but divorced in 2001.Brigitte headed to
Afghanistan in 2001 after the9/11 attacks , to assist theTaliban . The war prevented him enteringAfghanistan , so he instead spent four months training in aLashkar-e-Taiba camp inPakistan . He received instruction in weapons handling and explosives. Sajid Mir, an LET operative responsible for managing foreigners, marked him as a potential al-Qaeda operative.In early 2002 Brigitte returned to Paris. Keeping a low profile, he shunned contact with his family and lived in a hostel with Ibrahim Keita, another convert to Islam who Brigitte met on the various camping expeditions organized by the Couronnes mosques. Brigitte however was reticent to him as well, and Keita got suspicious when Brigitte asked if he could borrow his
driving licence . Eventually in May 2003 Brigitte left Paris for Australia, using a ticket provided to him by Mir. He did not tell Keita where he was going.In Australia
Brigitte is believed to have stayed with
Faheem Khalid Lodhi , better known asAbu Hamza , aPakistan i-born,Australia n-naturalized contact of Mir, living in South-westernSydney . He worked at ahalal restaurant in the center of Sydney, and along with fraternising with a select number of associates of Hamza, he kept in constant contact with Mir by phone. Brigitte also had an interest in aboriginal issues, and he joined and trained at a gym run byTony Mundine (father of the Australian boxerAnthony Mundine ). Hamza for his part continued working as anarchitect , but also made queries about acquring large quantities ofammonium nitrate , an ingredient to make a bomb.In order to stay longer in Australia, he sought a
marriage of convenience with Melanie Brown, who was introduced through mutual acquaintances in the Islamic community. Brown like Brigitte was a convert to Islam, and had served in theAustralian Army as a signaller inEast Timor . She took her conversion to Islam quite seriously, and was eager to marry a Muslim man, althoughAbu Hamza saw her as a possible security risk and somebody who would take up space in his apartment. Ten days after meeting each other Brigitte and Brown were married in an Islamic ceremony on30 August 2003 .Brigitte aggressively sought information from Brown about the Australian Army, its equipment and its operations, including details of the
Pine Gap joint defence facility. Brown, aware of her obligations not to pass on classified information, managed not to pass on anything substantially secret - she took the precaution of destroying her notebooks of her time inEast Timor . Brigitte and Hamza were often busy liaising with other associates in the Islamic community, and kept Brown at arms length.Arrest and deportation
The DST, France's internal security agency, had been passively monitoring 'Abderrahman the West Indian' since 1998. After fellow members of the Couronnes terror cell were found fighting for al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan investigations on others was stepped up. It wasn't until3 September 2003 that the pseudonym 'Abderrahman the West Indian' was connected with Willie Brigitte. On16 September 2003 French intelligence identified that Brigitte had bought a one way ticket to Australia, and six days later the Australian embassy was notified by mail about Brigitte and his background, seeking confirmation that Brigitte was still in Australia. Thinking that it was a routine trace request the Australian authorities did not immediately respond. Impatient, ten days later the French sent a secondary communication - this time directly toASIO , Australia's security intelligence body. The message arrived at ASIO headquarters on 11pm on3 October 2003 - the Friday evening of theLabour Day long weekend.Brigitte was promptly arrested on grounds of breaching the non-employment stipulations of his tourist visa, and sent to
Villawood Immigration Detention Centre . He was held incommunicado, and was interviewed byASIO officers - Brigitte was largely uncooperative though he was represented by his lawyerHarry Durimel . Abu Hamza was put under surveillance.Brigitte was subsequently deported and sent back to
France that month, where he was arrested on arrival. When his arrest became public the Australian authorities moved against Hamza and several of his associates, arresting them in a series of dawn raids in Sydney's south west. In 2006 Hamza was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment after being found guilty of planning a terrorist attack on Australia's electricity grid.Brigitte's case came to trial in February 2007, charged under
French law of "associating with criminals in relation to a terrorist enterprise". On15 March he was found guilty and sentenced to a nine-year prison sentence. [ [http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1873090.htm Brigitte jailed for planning Aust terrorist attacks] ABC News Online,16 March 2007 ] He remains legally married to Brown.ee also
*
List of notable converts to Islam
*Islamist terrorism External links
* [http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2004/s1039540.htm Willie Brigitte - Four Corners Programme]
* [http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_1477.asp?s=1 The French Connection - Sunday Programme]References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.