Willie Brigitte. AFP PHOTO

Brigitte was arrested in Australia in October 2003 following a tip-off from the French intelligence services, and deported for immigration offences.

Wearing short dreadlocks, a goatee beard and thin-rimmed glasses, Brigitte -- who has been in French custody for three years -- protested his innocence, after the three-judge panel heard details of his alleged drift into extremism.

"I am not a terrorist. I have never been involved in any way in the preparation of a terrorist act."

"I accepted Allah as my Lord... I committed myself to the Muslim community to help my brothers and sisters in need, and to deepen my faith," he told the court. "Does that make me a fundamentalist, an Islamist, an extremist?"

Denouncing the French inquiry as "biased", Brigitte said he would answer no further questions for the rest of the three-day trial.

"I have been kept in the prisons of the French Republic for three years and four months, and I have lost all faith in the judiciary of my own country, France," he said.

Brigitte faces up to 10 years' imprisonment on charges of "criminal conspiracy in relation with a terrorist enterprise".

France's top anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who investigated the case, suspects him of setting up a terror cell in Australia on the orders of the Pakistani Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Its alleged targets included the Pine Gap US electronic intelligence outpost in central Australia, the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney, and military bases across the country.

"You are accused of taking part in a group on the territories of France, Yemen, Pakistan and Australia that was formed in order to prepare one or several terrorist acts," said the judge, reading out the charge sheet.

Brigitte earlier acknowledged that he was known among Muslim groups by aliases including Abu Salahuddin in Pakistan, "Abderrahman the West Indian", and Abu Malimouna -- the name of one of his two daughters.

His alleged links to radical Islamists reach back to 1998, the year he converted to Islam and travelled to Yemen to attend a Koranic school alleged to be linked to Al-Qaeda, the court heard.

Back home, while working as a butcher, he started attending a radical mosque in Paris, and went on to take join -- and eventually run -- extreme forest and mountain training camps in France to toughen up would-be Islamist fighters, two of whom were later found dead in Afghanistan, the court heard.

A statement from Brigitte's second wife described his transformation into a "dictator", demanding that she and her daughters live by the strictest Islamic principles and openly professing admiration for the Taliban.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Brigitte is thought to have tried to reach Afghanistan, stopping in Pakistan where he is alleged to have undergone combat training.

After a "sleeping period" back in France, the court heard evidence that he he was summoned to Australia by a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative, arriving on May 16, 2003.

Living in southwest suburbs of Sydney, he took a job in a kebab shop, married an Australian Muslim convert and former army signaller, Melanie Brown -- his third wife -- and allegedly drew up plans for an attack.

At the time of his arrest, the court heard, he was carrying documents explaining how to "protect himself" and "pass unnoticed", and an Internet link to a site giving details on Australian nuclear and military sites.

The court heard that his marriage was celebrated by a radical imam linked to a Madrid-based Al-Qaeda leader, Syrian Eddin Barakat Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah, who was jailed for helping to to organise the September 11 attacks.

Another of his alleged contacts was Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistani-born architect sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2006 for planning to blow up Sydney's power grid.

Hearings were to resume Tuesday.