mundine..remeber hois 9/11 comments...

well.......this'll make ya wonder

Is there anything called a coincidence???

Brigitte trained at Mundine gym
November 2, 2003

ANTHONY Mundine's father was shocked by revelations terror suspect Willie Virgile Brigitte trained at his Redfern gym.

A newspaper today reported the French national trained over a number of months with Tony Mundine, who called him "Willie the Cowboy".

Mr Mundine's son, world champion boxer Anthony, also trains on the premises.

Brigitte was deported last month for visa violations and is being interrogated by French anti-terror authorities.

ASIO interviewed Mr Mundine and the gym manager, Alex Tui, on Thursday afternoon over Brigitte's attendance at the gym.

Mr Tui said he was familiar with Brigitte and was shocked by the allegations.

"I got talking to him and he told me he would travel in by train every day from Lakemba," he told the paper.

"He seemed like quite a nice bloke, so I was just shocked when the police came in," he said.

Brigitte also attended Anthony Mundine's world title fight on September 3 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

Anthony and his manager, Khoder Nasser, were also going to be interviewed about Brigitte, the paper reported.

Meanwhile, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock today said that the deportation of terror suspect Willie Virgile Brigitte highlighted major shortcomings in the powers of spy agency ASIO to detain suspects.

Mr Ruddock said he would ask for options to beef up the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation's powers, after government laws were watered down earlier this year following heated debate in the Senate.

Brigitte, a French national, was deported last month for visa violations and is being interrogated by French anti-terror authorities.

Mr Ruddock said local authorities had questioned him while he was in immigration detention but ASIO would not have been able to hold him against his will.

"One of the matters that came very clearly to light was that if he wanted to go, we would not be in a position to hold him," he told the Nine network.

"That's relevant if we have other people whom we might wish to examine, the powers do not run to that because of the way in which they were modified by the Senate."

Brigitte had been living in Sydney for five months when French authorities told Australia he was believed to have trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan and/or Afghanistan.peASIO won powers to detain people for a week for questioning under the Senate compromise, but France can detain suspects for up to three years without trial.

Mr Ruddock said Australian authorities also had a harder task to convince a court to issue a warrant for a suspect's arrest, although he would not say whether he wanted Australian to follow the French model.

"I want to be in a position to give our authorities greater flexibility to use questioning powers to obtain information that might identify significant terrorist risks to Australia," he said.

"The present powers that we have are not sufficiently wide and we need to look at broadening them.

"Now whether they should be as wide as the French, I'm not prepared to say, but obviously their powers are very much wider than ours and enable them to detain this man now while he is still of value in obtaining information.

"We would not have been in a position here to question him in the way in which the French are able to."

Mr Ruddock said Australia also needed the power to outlaw terrorist organisations without waiting for action from the United Nations Security Council.