Willie Virgile Brigitte (also known as Mohammed Abderrahman,[1] born 10 October 1968 in Guadeloupe, France) is a convicted criminal, who was deported from Australia in 2003 for breaching the terms of his tourist visa and, upon arrival in France, was charged and convicted in Paris in 2007 for associating with criminals in relation to a terrorist enterprise, including a plot to damage the Lucas Heights High Flux Australian Reactor and the Holsworthy Barracks, both located in Sydney, Australia.
[5] Brigitte attended the Omar and Abou Bakr mosques in the poor and largely immigrant Paris neighborhood of Couronnes, where he studied both Islam and Arabic.
It is believed he helped procure two Belgian passports, which were used by two assassins who managed to get close to, and kill, Afghan Northern Alliance warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud.
He was prevented from entering Afghanistan due to the war, and instead spent four months training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistan, where he received instruction in weapons handling and explosives.
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 is alleged to have stayed with Faheem Khalid Lodhi, better known as Abu Hamza, a Pakistani-born, Australian-naturalized contact of Mir, living in South-western Sydney.
He worked at a halal 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.
Hamza for his part continued working as an architect, but also made queries about acquiring large quantities of ammonium nitrate, an ingredient to make a bomb.
[1] 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.
[1] Brigitte aggressively sought information from Brown about the Australian Army, its equipment and its operations, including details of the Pine Gap joint defence facility.
The Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), France's internal security agency, had been passively monitoring 'Abderrahman the West Indian' since 1998.