Since September 11, the international community has pulled together in the fight against terrorism. One of the most seasoned pros in this new global battle is Jean-Louis Bruguière, a French judge renowned for his flamboyant personality, his bulldog persistence—and for getting his man.

There is arguably no single person as emblematic of international efforts to battle terrorism as French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière—which is why he’s usually the first French official that foreign counterparts turn to when they need a hand. Bruguière, 60, has some 20 years of specialized work behind him, work that has pitted him against violent Basque and Corsican nationalists, brutal members of extreme right- and left-wing organizations, Middle Eastern radicals and groups conducting state-sponsored terrorism. But it was the nightmarish attacks of 9/11 that catapulted Bruguière’s expertise into the international spotlight. Suddenly, stunned security forces and media from around the world were seeking him out for information on the Islamist radicals he’d been battling for a decade.
    “It’s probably not going too far to say that Bruguière invented the specialty of identifying and cracking Islamist terror networks,” says a French justice official and former Bruguière associate. “For years, we got the brush-off from foreign colleagues who thought our warnings about Islamist extremism were some sort of odd ‘French obsession.’ The attacks of September 11 turned Bruguière into the man everyone wanted to see.”
    That it took a calamity of such massive proportions to put Bruguière’s experience in demand is itself a testament to how thankless counter-terrorism often is—even among peers. Bruguière was, after all, the sleuth who fought French public apathy and political meddling in unraveling the 1989 bombing of a French passenger plane over Niger that killed 170 people. His inquiry ultimately led to the conviction of two Libyan secret service agents responsible for the attack. (It also earned the pipe-smoking magistrate the nickname “The Admiral” when he circumvented an international flight blockade of Libya by traveling there by boat.) In 1994, Bruguière staged another coup with the arrest of the notorious terror leader “Carlos the Jackal,” whom the intrepid judge snatched and spirited out of Sudan while his prey was sedated awaiting minor surgery. Carlos was later sentenced to life in prison for bombing attacks in France based on the prosecution dossier Bruguière had assembled.
    In the early 1990s, before most of the world had ever heard of al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, Bruguière had already begun uprooting underground logistical and financial networks assisting Islamic radicals waging terror attacks in Algeria. That early introduction provided Bruguière a view into the kinds of thinking and structures that later unleashed jihadist fury on France itself. He soon identified the cross-pollinating nature of Islamist networks established across Europe—as nominally religious fellowships—and the presence of fighters who had returned from Bosnian and Afghan jihads in their midst. (Recently, his services were also the first to determine that al Qaeda-associated training camps in and around Chechnya are producing the terror plotters in European networks.)
    The first clear signal that Salafist radicals had internationalized their jihad by targeting France came in 1994, when an Air France plane was hijacked in Algiers and flown to Marseille for refueling. After French officials realized the terrorists planned to fly the gas-bloated jet to Paris and crash it into the city center, elite French SWAT teams stormed the plane, killing the hijackers—and preventing what al Qaeda members later achieved on 9/11.
    The following year, Bruguière hit the ground running when a series of bomb attacks rocked Paris, killing 10 people and wounding more than 200. The teamwork between French intelligence forces and Bruguière’s investigating staff soon tracked and shut down the cells and networks behind the strikes. In addition to nabbing Islamists who provided funds and logistical support for the jihadist activity, Bruguière also convicted the two Algerians who had planted the bombs. A third extremist accused of orchestrating and financing the plot on behalf of Algerian-based extremists is in a London jail fighting extradition.
    The 1995-96 bombing campaign convinced Bruguière of something the American public would believe only in the aftermath of 9/11: that the international jihad movement was indeed globalizing, and that it could truly be battled only by enlisting France’s allies in Europe and abroad. But making the case to police and intelligence forces in countries that had not been attacked wasn’t easy. “Many of our colleagues—notably in the U.S., but some in Europe as well—felt this was an ‘ex-colonialist hang-up,’ some French obsession with Algeria,” recalls a French anti-terrorism official who works with Bruguière. “It was very hard work getting skeptics to realize that Islamist networks plotting attacks on France had taken root on their own turf. It was even harder to get them to understand that people they considered to be ‘ordinary criminals’—those who raised illicit money or forged identification papers—made up the logistics networks backing terror plots. Getting them to connect the dots was agonizing because time lost increased the possibility of attack.”
    It wasn’t until the late 1990s, however, that Bruguière’s European counterparts were fully convinced that he had a case that merited international attention. In 1998, Bruguière coordinated sweeps in a number of European countries ahead of attacks planned for the French-hosted World Cup soccer championship. In December 2000, after tracking the movements and activities of Islamist radicals, Bruguière alerted German police to a Frankfurt cell preparing an attack on the Christmas market at the Strasbourg Cathedral. Arrests in Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Belgium thwarted the scheme. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, meanwhile, Bruguière rounded up remnants of a terror network he knew to be plotting a suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Testimony of arrested network members in other European countries indicated additional strikes on a U.S. military base in Belgium were also in the works.
    Convincing American authorities of the rising Islamist threat was even more of a challenge. As late as 1999—and despite clear Islamist ties to the initial World Trade Center attack in 1993—U.S. colleagues had been dismissive of Bruguière’s warnings. Their reaction, recalls a former Bruguière associate, “tended to reflect the attitude, ‘If it were really a threat, we’d know about it already.’” Ironically, a similar Bruguière rebuff in Canada ultimately led to an American epiphany not only about the jihadist threat but also about Bruguière’s importance as an ally. In 1999, while tracking a Canadian-based organizer of radical networks in Europe, Bruguière and his deputy, Jean-François Ricard, traveled to Montreal, where local authorities downplayed the suspect’s fanatical links and activities and provided minimal investigative cooperation. At least one Islamist cohort of that Montreal radical soon vanished from sight—and was arrested two months later driving into the U.S. in a van packed with 130 pounds of explosives. The Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, turned out to be the al Qaeda-trained “Millennium bomber,” whose orders were to blow up the Los Angeles International Airport as 2000 was rung in.
    “Ressam’s arrest really changed the Americans’ tone with Bruguière,” the justice official says. “Before, they tended to view him as a no-tech investigator—an Old World cop who couldn’t hold a candle to the spy satellites and other high-tech capabilities of the CIA and FBI. Then, they suddenly realized the nature of the Islamist terror threat and saw that human involvement is probably better adapted to dealing with it. They also appreciated the fact that Bruguière had adopted an efficient approach before anyone else even knew there was a threat out there.”
    Indeed, at the Americans’ request, Bruguière served as an expert witness at Ressam’s trial. Bruguière would later recall the court official and terror neophyte who, when he heard the name “al Qaeda,” responded with the equivalent of “Al Who?” He also remembers seeing a flash of recognition in Ressam’s eyes as Bruguière catalogued jihad leaders and operatives. Bruguière’s interaction with American colleagues grew from there—with mutual professional esteem evolving into something approaching friendship. Those relationships have facilitated an exchange of information between the understandably secretive and defensive players in counter-terrorism. “Bruguière is one of the few foreigners who commands full respect from American intelligence officials as an equal, a trusted ally,” says French terror expert Roland Jacquard. “They also know he’s got the determination and power to act when things need to get done fast.”
    An example of that trust was seen last June, when U.S. intelligence officials identified Christian Ganczarski, a German convert to radical Islam, in Saudi Arabia. A veteran of al Qaeda’s Afghan camps who once boasted of having met bin Laden, Ganczarski was linked to a deadly 2002 suicide bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia (the suicide attacker placed a call to Ganczarski shortly before his strike). Despite that connection—and ties to other known practitioners of violent jihad—German laws requiring relatively high levels of evidence of wrongdoing prevented Ganczarski’s arrest as a terror suspect. Piqued by Germany’s inability to act, U.S. intelligence officials lost no time negotiating Ganczarski’s expulsion from the kingdom to Germany—via France. U.S. officials knew that, in accordance with French law, Bruguière opens legal inquiries into any attack targeting French interests or—as in the Tunisian attack—claiming French victims. Given that Ganczarski was a prime suspect in Bruguière’s investigation, alerted police were able to arrest the German during his Paris layover. He’s been in custody ever since.
    Similarly, Australian police worked hand-in-hand with Bruguière last September in the arrest and deportation to France of Guadeloupe-born Islamist, Willie Brigitte. A convert to Islam who—astonishingly enough—underwent his jihadist training after 9/11 in a Pakistan-based camp run by extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, Brigitte was believed to be waiting for fellow radicals to join him in Australia to execute a terror strike.
    “Bruguière and his partners in the French counter-terror organization follow their suspects and developments in the Islamist world very carefully,” notes Jacquard. “Foreign colleagues know he’ll do what he needs to do to undermine the terrorist threat. And as in the case of Ganczarski, they will even ask him to exercise responsibilities and powers that other security authorities may not enjoy.”
    Indeed, Bruguière sits atop a specialized anti-terror section unique to France—a body created by a 1986 law establishing a highly centralized police and investigating authority to combat the increasingly complex threat of terrorism. It links Bruguière’s team of five inquiry-conducting magistrates with a pair of covert information-gathering organizations: a crack police unit called the Renseignements Généraux (similar to the FBI) and the counter-terror intelligence service, DST. As head of the judicial branch that investigates information and suspects identified by those agencies—and that builds cases to be eventually tried in court—Bruguière is one of a handful of French officials fully in the loop on the information in the fight on terror.
    Meanwhile, the same 1986 law created a useful legal weapon adapted to countering terror schemes. The catchall charge of “association with wrongdoers involved in terrorist enterprises” allows investigators to link the much wider base of logistical support that facilitates attacks with the network operatives at the top of the pyramid. Under this precept, the counterfeiter of documents, the arms transporter or the thief whose ill-gotten gains are knowingly forked over to people in terror networks are legally tied with those who actually plant the bombs. And neither Bruguière nor his intelligence and police partners hide or apologize for using moles and other informants in Salafist mosques or extremist circles. In-formation obtained there has repeatedly allowed French investigators to keep tabs on militant imams, track the evolution of network members and identify new recruits falling under the spell of radical Islam.
    Ironically, those laws—and the power they afford security officials like Bruguière—were long denounced by civil libertarians in France and abroad as far too sweeping and prone to widespread abuse. Suspects may in fact be detained and questioned for 92 hours before charges are filed, and they may remain jailed for up to three and a half years as investigations are completed and go to trial. But just as many who brushed off Bruguière’s early warnings on Islamist terror have fallen in line to fight it, most nations have responded to 9/11 with security laws that far surpass France’s 1986 statutes. The United States and Britain have notably been denounced by some observers as having sacrificed due process and the presumption of innocence with authoritarian measures to fight terrorism. France’s formerly trailblazing measures “almost look outdated and quaint by comparison,” muses Jacquard. “The wider goal of terrorism has always been to force democracies to quash the very rights and liberties at their core in order to defend themselves. Finding the right balance between security and freedom is our biggest challenge.”
    But it’s one the French law seems to have managed nicely. The 1986 law—and the special units it created—have thus far managed to prevent any successful strikes on French soil since the 1995-96 bombings and have allowed Bruguière to thwart a number of unfolding, often unreported plots. Meanwhile, Bruguière himself has largely personified the open and productive counter-terrorism partnership that continues to flourish across the Atlantic—and which actually grew stronger even as the French-American cold war over Iraq raged last year.
    Critics, however, say that Bruguière also personifies the way that ego and love of headlines can negatively affect the anti-terror drive. They claim Bruguière’s fondness for attention has led him to adopt the high-profile role of a crusader, whose media-thrilling methods—such as using large sweeps to net a small number of suspects—violate civil liberties. His international reputation has also provoked jealousies—and at times full-blown feuds—within counter-terror forces. “Bruguière is an extremely capable investigator, and one who has done this nation a great service in fighting terrorism,” comments an official close to President Jacques Chirac. “But he has also stepped on many, many toes.”
    Perhaps, but Bruguière seems to have made more allies than enemies—and won some powerful admirers. Just recently, he and a delegation of French intelligence officials met with Bush Administration members, who thanked them for their cooperation in the recent flurry of terror scares that led to the grounding of U.S.-bound Air France flights. “This is one of the huge advantages of forming personal relationships within the very tense and high-risk environment of counter-terrorism,” notes one French security official. “When Americans pick up the phone and call Paris to get or give information, they aren’t dealing with some faceless ‘French guy.’ They’re usually dealing with Bruguière. That’s how it works—and that’s why it works.”