The Good Frenchman

"World's Top Terrorist Hunter"

Did you know there was a "World's Top Terrorist Hunter"?

Did you know he was French?

The world's leading terrorist hunter is on a secret mission in Sydney to investigate Australian links to global terrorism[.]
A secret mission, you see.
Judge Bruguiere, 60, has been at the forefront of the war on terror for 20 years.... Dubbed by the French as Le Cowboy, Judge Bruguiere is best known for tracking down international terrorist Carlos the Jackal in 1994 and foiling an attack during the 1998 soccer World Cup in France. He is keen for other countries to adopt a French-style system, enabling authorities to hold a suspect for up to two years without charge.
The judicial system for restraining terrorists failed utterly to prevent the development of massive networks across Europe and Asia, but it isn't the fault of men like Le Cowboy. It's interesting that the French themselves characterize their best terror-hunter in those terms, is it not?

These French magistrates did the best they could do, under the constraints of the legalistic system. Zacarais Moussaoui, for example, was being hunted by one of them in England, long years before 9/11. The British, however, refused to allow for his extradition -- or even for him to be questioned by the French judges.

It was an honest try, by dedicated men who wanted to keep this a law-and-order matter, who wanted to prevent it from becoming a war. They failed, but we ought to think of them kindly. They did what they could, when the world still believed that terrorists could be restrained by courts and laws, prisons and judges and extradition. It is to no one's benefit that their system failed; the world would have been a better place if they could have made it work.

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