War on terror - A pipe smoker with a 357 Magnum
The French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière is among the most successful terrorist hunters of the world
by Michael Mönninger
Paris
On Christmas 1994 French narrowly escaped their own 09/11. An Algerian suicide commando group had kidnapped an Air France Airbus on the flight from Algiers to Paris, intending to topple the Eiffel tower. But during the intermediate stop in Marseille French special troops could storm the airplane.
At that time the Paris judge Jean Louis Bruguière learnt a fundamental lesson: "Each failed attack instigates automatically its succvessors." In 1995, much like in the eighties, France indeed experienced a series or murder attacks on department stores and railway stations. With an unparalleled large raid Bruguière succeeded to smash the clandestine networks. Since then the country has not experienced any heavy attacks any more, although the threat remained. "France, together with the USA and Israel,", says a colleague of the judge, "is still the principal terror target of the western world".
While French political elite gladly theorizes in an grandiose fashion over the order of the world, it prefers to keep silence when it comes to successes of its police and secret service. France striking power in the terror fight in any case has a name and a face: It is the 60 years old Bruguière, vice-president of the Paris Court of Justice "Tribunal de Grande Instance" and the head of the French anti-terror justice.
Bruguière and his five colleagues represent a singular authority which unites powers of the secret service, public prosecution, the legal system and the police, which by far exceeds the limits of the division of power. They can order shadowing of suspects, search-throughs, phone tapping, subpoenas and arrests, even impose sentences. And in contrast to the federal German law they have an absolute central power in the terror fight, allowing them them to step in at the lowest possible level.
Bruguière's offices are at the dead end of a corridor in the highest floor of the Palais de Justice on the Île de la Cité. However, world-wide traveler terrorist hunter rather seldom enjoys the protection of the armored doors, bulletproof windowpanes, video cameras and personal air-locks. "I have to do simply too much to be afraid", says he. For instance, he agrees to meet not in his security wing, but rather in a breakfast restaurant. Bruguière, from a family of judges in the sixth generation, a pilot and officer of the Legion of Honour, is an inconspicuous man with narrow lips and large ears. An aura of the conspiracy surrounds him, from his beige Trench coat to his manner of speaking - quiet, the hands protecting his mouth, as if he were afraid he's being tailed.
The Caucasus: The new Jihad battleground
The terrorist hunter, because of his comprehensive authority called "the sun king", makes one thing pretty clear: France has the best terror investigators - the man, who's famous since the arrest of the terrorist Carlos, has some right to say. "Other than USA we have a long and painful history when it comes to out-of-state terror groups", says Bruguière. "Our historical ties to Arab states make it easier for us to understand the roots of the terrorism."
From Casablanca over Bali to Djerba and Istanbul there is no scene of crime, where the Frenchman would not be contacted first. "In the world-wide anti-terror war", says Walter Purdy, director of Terrorism Research Center in Washington, "Bruguière stands at foremost front." And Bruguière does not only cooperate closely with the Moscow authorities only since the recent assassination attempts in Russia. Since one year he has been directing the investigations regarding the connections between Al-Qaida and Chechnian terrorists. It is his second investigation of this kind, after he had already looked into the role of Pakistani and Afghan training camps for Al-Qaida. At that time he was proven right, and so it does not disturb him that he again reaps skepticism: "We're dealing with a kind of a Talibanisation of Chechnya, with a new type of Chechnian Arabs, who want to transform the whole region into a second Afghanistan. The Djihad has a new battleground in the Caucasus, and that is just three flight hours away from us."
Judge Bruguière is notorious for his hard-ball methods. Routinely he lets arrest suspects by carloads, to have them cross-examined for up to four days without an arrest warrant. Bruguières success ratio is altogether considerable, even if often he ends up with just a few suspects. From the 120 cases, connected to Al_Qaida, he nevertheless brought 60 all the way to the verdict. At present he works in parallel on 50 cases.
Because the examining magistrate carried occasionally a bulletproof vest and a 357er Magnum, the media painted him in Dirty Harry colors. But during the conversation the cultivated pipe smoker does not radiate anything nothing cocky. Rather he maintains the calculated understatement of a detective typical for family crime films on TV. His bodyguards, who have been guarding him and its family around the clock, since some years ago a bomb at the door of his Paris flat has been discovered, must stand around somewhere in front of the restaurant . But the body guard is as difficult to identify as several thousand civil investigators in the whole of France, who dissolve in the crowd and the traffic. This invisible rearmament, together with the work of the judge Bruguière work, are the reason, why today the country is spared the terrorist attacks. Even more, says Bruguière: "None of the nineteen 09/11 September kidnappers, whocame from Spain, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain, had dared to step on French soil."
Also abroad Bruguière's successes are enormous. As an example the investigation into the Algerian Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested in 1999 at the American-Canadian border with a suit-case full of explosive, intended for an attack on Los Angeles airport. Spectacular was also the warning, which Bruguière sent to FBI regarding a Morocco-born Frenchman, who was being tailed in August 2001 during training hours at a flight simulator in Minnesota. But only after 11 September the Americans understood the references in the Zacaria Moussawi's computer regarding connections to Mohammed Atta. "I am often asked by the US colleagues, what's the reason for our superior intelligence", says Bruguière with raised hands. "I think, it is a result of a historical evolution." His recent hits: uncovering an Australian Al-Qaida cell and the arrest of the presumed head of the Basque Eta.
"Killing Bin Laden with a rocket does not solve any problem"
But the road to success was bloody and full of mistakes for France. "Until 1980 the French could hardly identify attacks within their own country", say the terrorism expert Jeremy Shapiro of the Brookings institution in Washington. "Meanwhile they have detailed intelligence about terror cells abroad, who plan attacks on third countries." Into the eighties France believed to be able to protect itself by a policy of the isolation. "one assumed a neutral attitude and left terrorists undisturbed in their own country undisturbed, as long as they did not plan a hit at home", says Shapiro. But this kind of an asylum grant, which passed the buck of the terror defense on to the foreign policy, invited ever more assassins.
The turning point came 1986, when Middle East commandos detonated a dozen of bombs in Paris department stores and subway stations. The government centralized the terror defense, improved the DST secret service and appointed Jean Louis Bruguière as the highest anti-terror judge. His complete independence permitted him, at first against the will of the government, to start investigations against the Libyan head of state Ghaddafi and made an end of the Appeasement policies in the relation to rogue states. And while between Paris and Washington political ice age prevails today , the cooperation in the defense against terror continues without a hitch. Bruguière is pleased :"we never had as intensive contact with our US colleagues as we have now".
That is the advantage of depoliticizing the war against terror, called the "Alan Greenspan effect" by Shapiro: "France treats the fight against terror like we treat our central bank - as an issue, that is too serious to be left in hands of politicians."
In the fight against the terror, which he calls the "hundred-years war of today", Bruguière sees no more than a supporting role for the military , "To kill Bin Laden with a Tomahawk missile solves no problem." He is not the commander-in-chief, but rather the inspirator and financier of a loose net, which metastases like a cancer and which has been getting more and more diffuse, since Al-Qaida does not enjoy any government support anymore. . Bruguière's prescription sounds unspectacular: he recommends an intensive cooperation of the secret services, police, justice and the community of states. He thereby pursues a clear goal: "France wants to show that there is a legal answer to the terrorism."
(c) DIE ZEIT 08.01.2004 Nr.3
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