##terrorist threats against australia##

Pakistan’s forgotten al-Qaeda nuclear link
By Kaushik Kapisthalam

"...Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a terrorist group based in Muridke, Pakistan. Although founded by the chief promoter of the Afghan jihad and bin Laden mentor, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, LeT claims ousting India from Kashmir as its main goal. But experts say LeT shared training camps with al-Qaeda and that many al-Qaeda-linked Afghan-Arabs have been found fighting for LeT in Indian-administered Kashmir. The LeT fought on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well.

An Australian named David Hicks, who was picked up by coalition forces in Afghanistan and who is now in Guantanomo prison in Cuba, was trained by LeT. LeT has also provided training for jihadis from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Chechnya. In December 2001, the US banned LeT after it was implicated in a terrorist attack on India's parliament. Pakistan subsequently banned LeT in January 2002, but allowed it to operate under a new name - Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Prior to being banned, LeT used to hold massive annual conclaves in Pakistan, preaching jihad against India, Israel and the United States. Today, it is widely believed that LeT is operating as a global al-Qaeda "franchisee", even though it is still active in Indian Kashmir.

In a sensational claim, French journalist and author Bernard Henri-Levy stated that Pakistan's disgraced "father" of the nuclear bomb, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, was in fact a member of LeT. What is definite is that Khan did attend the last openly held LeT moot, in April 2001, as an honored guest. Accompanying Khan on the dais was none other than Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the plutonium expert who met bin Laden. According to the South Asia Analysis Group, bin Laden himself was known to address LeT annual meets over the phone for many years, even when he was hiding in Afghanistan and Sudan....

Last October, a French-born terrorist named Willie Brigitte was arrested in connection with his actions in Australia. Brigitte admitted to be a member of LeT. Australian police later arrested a Pakistani architect - Faheem Lodhi, who was also a member of LeT, and was supposedly Brigitte's co-conspirator in a plot to conduct a major terrorist attack in Australia. Reports indicate that Lodhi's and Brigitte's target was supposedly the electrical grid. Other targets considered included the Lucas Heights nuclear research center outside Sydney and various military facilities and natural-gas pipelines. It is also known that both Lodhi and Brigitte received funds and took orders from a mid-to-high-level LeT member in Pakistan named Sheikh Sajid. More alarming, Brigitte told interrogators that he had personally seen a Chechen chemical-weapons expert named Abu Salah experiment with chemical weapons in an LeT camp in Pakistan."

The full article is at http://www.jsmineset.com/home.asp?RQ=EDL,1&ARFG=1&GID=0&linkid=6
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