November 3, 2003	Monday	Ramazan 7, 1424

PARIS, Nov 2: Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France’s principal anti-terrorism magistrate has said in an article in Sunday’s issue of The New York Times that “several dozen” young Frenchmen of Muslim origin had made their way to Iraq “since summer” to take part in the recent spate of attacks in Iraq, his local office confirmed in Paris.

These international brigades of young Muslim men — brought to Iraq by way of the international networks of Al Qaeda which remain active within France and West Europe — were said to be increasingly responsible for the recent spate of attacks against the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations, The International Red Cross and several suicide attacks unleashed across Baghdad on 27 October.

His accusations are in line with recent revelations made by the French secret services which hold that the authors of the recent attacks are not members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, but are non-Iraqi Muslims who have infiltrated into Iraq during the past several weeks from across the country’s borders with neighbouring states.

Some of the details made formally on Sunday by Judge Bruguiere were previously revealed on October 27 by French public television, which alleged that many of the volunteers made their way to Iraq in the wake of the voice message by Osama bin Laden broadcast by Al-Jazeera on October 18.

According to another French secret service expert, the October 27 series of suicide attacks in Baghdad were the doing of non-Iraqi members of Al Qaeda who infiltrated from the borders with Syria and Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent from Iran.

According to the expert, the voice message broadcast on Al- Jazeera by Osama bore a large part of responsibility not only for unleashing the attacks, but also instigating the decision by many foreign non-Iraqi Muslims, such as the “several dozen” from France, to make their way to Iraq.

According to Antoine Sfeir, director of the Observatory of the Arab World, who was interviewed on another public TV news programme, “let’s not forget there are four well-defined groups presently active in Baghdad, each of which could have played a role in the attacks.”

“Firstly, the former partisans of Saddam Hussein, who remain sufficiently numerous, who constitute the hard core of the Iraqi resistance.”

“Secondly, the former Arab volunteers, who arrived at the beginning of the war whose numbers have since increased by new arrivals from over Iraq’s frontiers with neighbouring countries, frontiers that are impossible to completely control. These volunteers have nothing to lose, for they can’t return to their countries of origin, where they would be picked up and placed in prison. So they have nowhere else to go.”

“Thirdly, there are also the tribes who play a role (at a certain level), we often forget about them because they have motivations that are more mercantile than anything else, especially as they are better paid than they were when Saddam was in power.

“Then fourthly, the (member of the) Islamist movement.”

When asked whether he felt that the United States now found itself in a “quagmire”, Antoine Sfeir cautioned that “we should not jump to conclusions too quickly. We said already last spring when we opposed the war that the United States wasn’t taking into consideration the ethnic and religious differences within Iraq.

“For the British, however, the situation is much better, especially at Basra, for after the chaos, things are now looking up, especially with regard to the Shias, who were able to turn out at a recent rally with only some 3000 supporters. Whereas a few weeks earlier they would have been able to turn out a much greater number.”