Norm Dixon
Rupert Murdoch's hacks have been at it again — shamelessly manipulating, distorting and fabricating "news".
The Murdoch media empire's lynching of Willie Brigitte illustrates wonderfully why working people should never trust a word that is written in the capitalist press.
Murdoch's campaign to sow fear and suspicion is designed to ease the way for secretive police to be given harsher and more anti-democratic "anti-terrorism" powers.
On March 22, the Sydney Daily Telegraph emblazoned "Terrorist Willie Brigitte confesses: Sydney faces bomb attack 'of great size'" across its front page.
The "exclusive" story, luridly written by the newspaper's Europe correspondent Ben English and rehashed in various versions in other Murdoch-owned newspapers around Australia, claimed: "French investigators who have been interrogating Brigitte have established he had connections with the organisers of the September 11 and 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'."
English reported that Brigitte confessed that "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" and had named Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, the Lakemba-based imam who conducted Brigitte's marriage ceremony last August, as its "chief recruiter". Brigitte's "Sydney commander", wrote English, "is named as Faheem Khalid Lodhi, also known as Hamza".
English reported that these sensational revelations were contained in a "classified dossier compiled by France's top anti-terror judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere" that was "obtained" by the Telegraph.
The March 22 Telegraph's headline and story — entirely written in the present tense — created the misleading impression that Brigitte had suddenly "confessed" and provided new details of "terror plots" and "terror networks". However, the Melbourne Herald Sun's subeditor let slip that the "classified dossier" was in fact a request to the Australian government for a joint investigation, dated November 3 last year!
Recycled
The latest "revelations" amount to little more than a recycling of previous unsubstantiated and/or discredited accusations, assertions, rumours and outright lies peddled by the Murdoch press following Brigitte's October 17 deportation to France for working on a tourist visa. Even the new details simply confirm the shallowness of the case against Brigitte.
The Australian media learned of Brigitte's deportation on October 27, after French Radio Europe 1 reporter Alain Acco aired the story on the October 25-26 weekend. The source for Acco's account, virtually the sole basis of the subsequent wave of sensational and embroidered media reports of "terror cells" and "sleeper agents", was Bruguiere's office.
Brigitte was detained on October 9 after French officials alerted the Australian government that Brigitte had once visited Pakistan. He was held for working in violation of his tourist visa. Had the federal government even remotely suspected Brigette of being "sleeper agent", "creating "terror cells" or recruiting for terrorist groups, as was later claimed, it would have invoked ASIO's tough detention and interrogation powers. It did not.
As the uproar over Brigitte escalated after October 27, Murdoch's newspapers went into overdrive and tried to paint every aspect of Brigitte's uneventful stay in Australia in a sinister light. In a particularly disgusting series of articles, Murdoch journalists over many weeks trawled through Brigitte's wife Melanie Brown's private life.
On November 10, the Australian and other Murdoch papers trumpeted the claim that "Australian authorities" believed Brigitte was planning to attack Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. This claim turned out to be false, being based on an ASIO "worst-case scenario". On November 12, the federal government "categorically denied" reports that any photos of Lucas Heights had been found at Brigitte's home. However, similar claims remain in Bruguiere's dossier.
'Links'
Central to the Murdoch press's latest frame-up of Brigitte and others in Sydney's Muslim community are their "links" and "connections" with al Qaeda and the Madrid terrorists.
According to English, the dossier states that while in Pakistan, Brigitte was at a complex where islamic group Lashkar-e-Taiba "chiefs" lived.
At another Pakistan camp, English continues, "Brigitte trained with up to 3000" volunteers. Fifteen Americans who were also at that camp "were later arrested 15km from the White House. They were later convicted of planning a violent jihad." English is apparently referring to the controversial charging of 11 American Muslims last year in Virginia after US federal prosecutors claimed their playing of paintball games constituted "terrorist training". Three were convicted of conspiracy on March 4.
The men happened to be students of a prominent Virginia-based cleric, Ali Timimi, who English claims "was named by the CIA as head of the [Virginia] network and the chief recruiter for LET" (something that the al Qaeda-obsessed US media has not reported). Timimi was not charged. English then points out that Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, Brigitte's marriage celebrant, once visited Timimi in 2001.
Zoud has laughed off the claim that he is the "chief recruiter" of a Sydney "terror cell". He pointed out that he only time he met Brigitte was at his marriage and no police agency had interviewed him about Brigitte or Bruguiere's allegations.
He told the March 31 Australian that he visited the US in 2001 to attend the conference of the Islamic Assembly of North America and visited Timimi's mosque afterwards. "To allege that Sheikh Timimi and I have been in constant contact with each other is a fabrication that I totally reject."
Without providing details, English claims the dossier also "links" Zoud with "two of al Qaeda's most senior lieutenants: Abu Qatada and Abu Dahdah". Qatada is being held without charge in a British prison, accused by British Home Secretary David Blunkett of being the "spiritual adviser" to a terrorist group opposed to the Jordanian government. Dahdah has been in a Spanish jail since November 2001 as the suspected leader of an al Qaeda cell in Spain.
Zoud told the March 31 Australian that several years ago he twice phoned Qatada, an expert on Islamic inheritance law, for advice on a divorce he was handling. Zoud emphatically denied that he knows Dahdah.
According to English, Brigitte was "ordered to Australia" by Sajid, the LET man he met in Pakistan. "Through two Paris-based Pakistanis, [Sajid] gave Brigitte 3500 euros to pay for his aircraft ticket and initial expenses", writes English.
However, Brigitte's lawyer Harry Durimel told ABC Foreign Correspondent reporter Evan Williams in December (see < http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2004/20040209_brigitte/A HREF="mailto:int_durimel.htm"><int_durimel.htm>) that Brigitte borrowed the money because he had decided to start a new life in Australia and was interested in helping Aboriginal youth.
Brigitte was met by Faheem Khalid Lodhi, also known as Hamza, who "was placed in charge of 'greeting Brigitte, of his supervision and monitoring his activities'", according to English's account of Bruguiere's dossier. Lodhi rejects this sinister interpretation of his actions. He told the February 9 Four Corners program: "It is the duty of a Muslim to help out a wayfarer and [I] just wanted to help Willie Brigitte ... with accommodation and other stuff, like where the mosques are. [I] was just helping a foreigner and [have] done nothing wrong."
English's most sensational allegation follows on: "It was Hamza who gave Brigitte his mission: 'lodging a specialist in explosives who was to come to Australia'. Brigitte told the bomb specialist was a Chechen who may have been Abu Salah, the commander-in-chief of LET's terror training camp in Faisalabad. Salah planned to slip into Australia during the Rugby World Cup... The French dossier stated: "Brigitte said that the Lashkar group in Australia and created around Hamza was — with the assistance of this Chechen expert in explosives — to prepare a terrorist act of great size in Australia."
However, this fantastic scenario is imaginary, entirely based on speculation. What Brigitte in fact told Bruguiere was revealed by the ABC's Four Corners, which also obtained a copy of the dossier, on February 9: "Hamza did indeed tell me that an individual was going to arrive, and I was to give him accommodation in my home, but he didn't tell me who it was. I deduced that it could be an explosives expert, and I asked Abu Hamza if he knew who it was, but he didn't answer me openly, he just smiled. So I thought of Abu Salah."
In the end, Brigitte refused to put up whoever the person was, and that was the end of matter.
English claimed that "Salah's plans were thwarted when his visa application was twice rejected by Australian authorities". However, ABC radio's AM program on March 22 contradicted this: "Australian counter-terrorism agents checked travel records for all people coming to Australia from Chechnya...[and] prospective tourists coming ... for the Rugby World Cup, including those associated with the Georgia Rugby team, but they could not find the man Brigitte had referred to."
From Green Left Weekly, April 7, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.