Famed French judge Bruguiere tells of a troubled Pakistan
In a new book, former investigative magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere says Pakistan has lost control of rogue military and intelligence officers, who are aiding militants.
By Sebastian Rotella
November 4, 2009
Reporting from Washington - The Pakistani government has lost control of rogue military and intelligence officers who aid Al Qaeda and its allies and play a double game with the West, a renowned French judge asserts in an upcoming book. ……………………
The book details French investigations of extremist activity in Pakistan, including a case in which officials went as far as hiding militants from CIA inspection teams at a training camp run by the Pakistani military. Military handlers then sent the trainees on terrorist missions to the West, Bruguiere asserts. ………………………..
Islamic radicals seemed to benefit from "a certain sympathy, to say the least" within Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, he writes, citing one of his cases. "We did not have the impression that our interlocutors considered [Al Qaeda militants] to be terrorists." …………………………
"The situation in Pakistan is among the most worrisome," he writes. "The central government has lost control of certain elements of the army and the ISI, an intelligence service that no longer has the trust of its foreign partners."
The judge cites his investigation of Willie Brigitte, a Frenchman who was convicted of terrorism charges in 2007.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Al Qaeda militants helped Brigitte go to Pakistan to train with hundreds of Arabs and Westerners and several thousand Pakistanis and Afghans at a mountain complex in Punjab. Affiliated with Al Qaeda, the camp was run jointly by the Lashkar-e-Taiba extremist group and Pakistani security forces, which supplied arms and instructors, the book says.
CIA officers accompanied by Pakistani officials made four inspections of the camp, part of an agreement in which Pakistan had promised to prevent foreign militants from training with Lashkar, Bruguiere writes.
"But, since most of the officers of Lashkar belonged to the army, these inspections were doomed to draw a blank," the book says. "The foreign recruits were alerted on the eve of the arrival of the inspection teams by their instructors, military men informed by their hierarchy.
"The trainees then had to . . . erase any traces of their presence and head to an elevation of more than 13,000 feet while the inspection lasted." ……………….
LA Times . . . Meanwhile, three Belgians and a French citizen are facing trial in their respective home countries after they were arrested upon their return from Pakistani camps last year. The suspects deny they were part of a terrorist conspiracy or plotting attacks in Europe. But one defendant has admitted to French investigators that the group received explosives training while in Waziristan. Three other Belgian and French members of the alleged cell are still believed to be at large in Pakistan or Afghanistan. . .European security officials have warned for many years of the threat posed by homegrown radicals who have gone to Afghanistan and Pakistan to wage jihad. . . .In July, U.S. officials announced that they had apprehended Bryant Neal Vinas, 25, a resident of Long Island, N.Y., who has confessed to traveling to al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan and firing rockets at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. . . . He has testified about his interaction with the six-member cell of recruits from Belgium and France. Vinas has also told the FBI that he spent time in Pakistan with another New York resident, whose identity and whereabouts are unknown. . . . But analysts said the camps, which offer basic lessons in homemade explosives and countersurveillance as well as weapons training, could easily relocate elsewhere in Pakistan
:
:
.