Willie Virgile Brigitte was born on 10/10/1968 in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, once a French colony and today the 26^th overseas region of France, to a relatively wealthy Christian French family. His father was an engineer and his mother worked as a pharmacist.

In 1985 Willie  Brigitte moved to Paris for his final year of school, but chose to join the Navy instead. He served for three years, having deserted the military twice.

Willie  Brigitte returned to civil life in 1993. He worked in variety of social welfare jobs such as drug rehabilitation facilitator, teacher and warehouse worker. Willie  Brigitte married for a short time a Syrian Muslim woman, Chakoura al Soubai, with whom he had one child.

Willie  Brigitte was a bookish person who read also the Islamic Quran. In 1998 he converted to Islam and traveled to Yemen in order to attend an Islamic school there. Willie  Brigitte used several Arabic names but was known mainly as Abdul-Rahman.

Back in Paris, France, Willie  Brigitte attended regularly the Omar and Abou Bakr radical Mosques in Couronnes, a poor and largely immigrant populated suburb of Paris. In the Abou Bakr Mosques Willie  Brigitte got acquainted to members of the Radical Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat - (GSPC) and went with them to some camping trips. That was, probably, the time in 1999 that Willie  Brigitte was recruited to the cause of Global Jihad.  He also married again a Muslim wife N'Deye Sarr from Congolese descent. They have two daughters but Willie  Brigitte divorced again in 2001.

After his divorce, in late 2001, Willie  Brigitte headed to Pakistan in order to join the Taliban in Afghanistan. Because of operation “Absolute Justice” in 11/2001 he was unable to join the Taliban and instead went to a training camp with Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan. Maj Sajid Mir, a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative responsible for managing foreigners, marked him as a potential al-Qaeda operative.

In early 2002 Willie  Brigitte returned to Paris. He shunned contact with his family and lived in a hostel. In 05/2003 Willie  Brigitte traveled to Sydney Australia to join the Sydney 2003 plot handled by Faheem Khalid Lodhi whom he already knew from Lashkar-e-Toiba camp in Pakistan.  

On 10/03/2003 Willie  Brigitte was arrested by AUSTRALIAN police. He was held incommunicado and interrogated by the AUSTRALIAN security service ASIO.  Willie  Brigitte was deported back to France on 10/17/2003.

Willie  Brigitte was accused in France for "associating with criminals in relation to a terrorist enterprise" and more specifically with helping procure two Belgian passports that were used by the assassins of the Afghanistan Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud on 09/09/2001.