Libya has been a very interesting conflict to follow. From the battle field tactics and strategies of the rebels, to the involvement of the world in trying to help things. We also witnessed R2P becoming a reality, as a means for intervening.
Probably the most interesting aspect of this conflict though is the involvement of foreign volunteers, mercenaries, and security contractors. Of course all three of these classifications have cross overs into one another, and the politics of the conflict have made things even more fuzzier. lol
Either way, I thought I would touch on a key aspect of warfare, in the history of wars, and that is picking the right side in a conflict to work for. Because if you choose wrong, you could very well end up getting executed or imprisoned for life. You could also have your reputation destroyed because of your involvement in a non-sanctioned activity. If you choose correctly, you could end up being pretty wealthy, or at least have work with a new government.
The thing to remember about picking sides though is that like with stock picking, you need to remove emotion from choosing your sides. You must be pragmatic in your choice, and be willing to accept the reality of your client, if they have gone bad or have become a wanted man to the country you reside in.
Meaning, several years back, Gaddafi was actually an ally of sorts, and the west was doing business with the guy. He was also anti-Al Qaeda, and was certainly taking them to task in Libya.
But then the Arab Spring happened, and all of those years of being a brutal dictator caught up with Gaddafi and the people spoke. The West also took a hint from other countries falling due to this middle eastern revolt, and decided it was best to switch sides and support the people against Gaddafi. And of course the West also had some bad history with Gaddafi back in the eighties, so it was easy to switch gears and label the guy public enemy number 1.
So what am I getting at here? Well below I have found numerous individuals and groups highlighted by the media as foreign volunteers, mercenaries, and security contractors in this war. Each individual or groups all had their reasons for picking their side in the conflict, and all of them either benefited or paid the price for that choice. At one time, their relationship with Gaddafi’s regime was a non-issue or even supported. And then one day, that relationship becomes a ‘no go’ and Gaddafi is the bad guy.
The point I wanted to make is that if you plan on entering a conflict like this, you must get educated on the history of the players, know the laws, and know exactly who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, based on what country you are from.
For example, in the US we had several individuals who just volunteered to fight with the rebels. How is this not mercenary? But because the US switched loyalties from Gaddafi’s camp to the rebels, then anyone who fought for the rebels was ‘good to go’. You were not a mercenary in this case, and instead you were a ‘foreign volunteer’ fighting the good fight.
And yet in the US and western media, there was an incredible amount of heart ache and protest about Gaddafi using mercenaries. To Gaddafi and his supporters, these were foreign volunteers or security contractors. Hell, a couple of years back, the west would have called them foreign volunteers and security contractors, helping out an ally. The winds of change…..
Logic being though is that if you wanted to enter this market, and you are a citizen of the west, then now you know what side of the conflict you are on (or should be on). Join Gaddafi, and you are a bad guy mercenary. Join the rebels, and you are a good guy foreign volunteer or security contractor. And doom on you if you haven’t been following the news and doing your research to figure what side your country is on, and what is the current status of the governments and rebels/insurgents in a conflict.
So with that said, I wanted to post a few notable individuals and groups in this conflict that ‘picked sides’. You might agree with their choice, and you might not. But they made their choice based on money, loyalty, or principal–or some combination of all of these. This is nothing new in the history of conflict, but it is interesting to watch it play out in real time and on a world stage. Every aspect of these conflicts are recorded, filmed and talked about, and that is what makes this a unique deal to study and observe. –Matt
The Ontario man who helped Muammar Gaddafi’s son flee Libya
Stewart Bell
Oct 29, 2011
A private security contractor and former soldier from Canada has admitted he helped Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi flee Libya last month as Tripoli was falling to anti-Gaddafi rebels.
Gary Peters is president of Can/Aus Security & Investigations International Inc. in Cambridge, Ont. He is also Saadi Gaddafi’s longtime bodyguard and admitted he was part of a team that drove the late dictator’s third son across Libya’s southern border to Niger.
The convoy was ambushed after it had crossed back into Libya and Mr. Peters was shot. He returned to Toronto’s Pearson airport in September, bleeding heavily from an untreated bullet wound to his left shoulder.
“I got hurt over there so I come back,” he said when approached this week by a National Post reporter. He said he had been providing security to members of the Gaddafi family since 2004 and had continued to do so throughout the NATO campaign against the dictator. He worked mostly for Saadi but said he had also briefly guarded Col. Gaddafi’s sons Saif al-Islam and Hannibal.
Before helping Saadi flee to Niger, Mr. Peters said he had escorted Hannibal and Col. Gaddafi’s daughter Ayesha from Libya to Algeria in a convoy. His account of working for the Gaddafis was verified by several sources.
“I’m not a mercenary,” he said. “I work for a person in particular, have done for years, for close protection. When we go overseas, I don’t fight. That’s what a mercenary does. Defend? Yes. Shoot? Yes. But for defence, for my boss, and that’s what happened. The convoy got attacked and two of us got hit.”
After Mr. Peters had delivered Saadi to Niger, he returned to Libya, where gunmen opened fire on his three-vehicle convoy, he said. Five of the attackers were killed during the firefight and he was also hit.
He said he made his way to Tunisia and Frankfurt, then got on a flight to Toronto.
“I bled on the plane. I fell asleep and when I wake up … I felt a trickle and there was blood everywhere. There was a little bit of shrapnel in there.”
He got as far as the airport parking lot before he began to teeter from blood loss. He was taken to a nearby hospital to have the shrapnel removed. The RCMP spoke to him.
Canada has enacted UN sanctions imposing an arms embargo on Libya, and freezing the assets of Gaddafi family members, including Saadi, but Mr. Peters has not been charged with any crimes.
“I broke no laws,” he said. “But they have to investigate, which is fine.”
The NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi rebels have long alleged the dictator was being propped up by mercenaries, mostly from neighbouring African countries as well as Eastern Europe. But Mr. Peters’ story shows the family also employed Western security specialists, some from Canada.
It also indicates Saadi, the 38-year-old soccer-loving playboy of the Gaddafi clan, had taken steps to move himself and his family to North America as his father’s rule began to falter, although the escape plan was thwarted.
Mr. Peters said Saadi intended to flee to a property that had been purchased in Mexico, but that fell through. He also wanted to come to Canada, but Mr. Peters said that also did not work out, so he ended up in Niger.
“He loves Canada, that’s why he keeps coming back here, every year,” Mr. Peters said.
“He’s got investments here, he’s got property here. He wants to [move to Canada], but I was warned by RCMP that if he comes here they’ll arrest him straight away, I don’t know why.”
Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Saadi on Sept. 29 for allegedly “misappropriating properties through force and armed intimidation” when he was head of the Libyan soccer team. He is also subject to a UN travel ban and assets freeze for being “the commander of military units allegedly involved in repression of demonstrations by civilians during Libya’s uprising.”
But Mr. Peters denied that.
“If he was a mass murderer then obviously I wouldn’t work for him,” he said. “The man’s a gentleman, non-violent. They said that he’s the leader of a military unit. Bulls—, he’s not.”
He said while Col. Gaddafi, whom he said he had met, was “very intimidating” and “very hostile,” Saadi was a “very nice man, very educated, very nice guy. However don’t piss them off, very revengeful people.”
Sturdy and 5 ft. 5, with a pencil-thin moustache, brushcut and an Australian special forces army tattoo on his forearm, Mr. Peters goes by the nickname “Shorty.” He refers to Saadi as “The Boss.” He said since his return to Canada he had continued to speak regularly with Saadi by phone.
He said he supported neither the Gaddafi regime nor the National Transitional Council, but believed Canada had backed the wrong side in the conflict. He accused the rebels of committing atrocities and said NATO had bombed civilian homes.
“I’m not political. This is my boss, he’s also a client, also a friend,” Mr. Peters said.
“It’s difficult but you have your own principles too, right? My morals say that I’ve got to stand by him.”
He said he was returning to Niger this weekend.
But he said he had paid a price for his loyalty to the boss. The word “dog” was scratched on his car, he said. He believes he is being followed.
“All my clients I had here, they’ve all gone. They all boycotted, which is fine.”
Asked why, he said, “because of who I work for, and that I’m continuing to work for him. People talk.”
Saadi is known for his lavish party lifestyle and his role as captain of the Libyan national soccer team, a position some suggest he did not earn through his skill on the field. He was also captain of the Tripoli soccer club and president of the Libyan Football Federation.
Mr. Peters said he was serving in the Royal Australian Army when he first met Saadi. The Gaddafi son was visiting the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney and Mr. Peters was assigned to protect him, he said.
Mr. Peters moved to Canada in 2002 (he is a landed immigrant, not a Canadian citizen) and worked “on and off” for the next two years as a close protection operative for the security company Blackwater USA.
His website says he has worked as a private investigator and close protection officer in Canada, the U.S. and Middle East. It says he is a certified executive protection specialist and member in good standing of the International Association of Security Professionals.
“Mr. Peters has provided protection and care for a significant amount of dignitaries, royalty and celebrities and is well acquainted with dealing with the various types of personalities from around the world in different locations and situations,” it reads.
A second on-line profile said he had received training in Israel and worked for Garda World in 2008-09. Ontario government records show Can/Aus Security was incorporated in 2009. No directors or officers are named in the corporate records.
When Saadi visited the Toronto International Film Festival, Mr. Peters led his security detail. According to another private security consultant familiar with the visit, Saadi spent much of his time with prostitutes.
Mr. Peters said he was in Libya when the anti-Gaddafi uprising began. He was in Libya every month after that until he was shot. He said he had no qualms about working for the Gaddafis, even after Canada joined the NATO campaign against the dictatorship.
“For starters, I haven’t worked for Saif for probably three years now. I only work for Saadi. Saadi’s principles or whatever, he disagrees with how his father went about it. He’s anti that, but being Muammar, you can’t say no to him.”
In July, Mr. Peters took part in a “fact-finding mission” to Libya. A Cambridge consultant was hired to conduct a survey of the damage caused by NATO air strikes. Mr. Peters assembled the security team that was to accompany her.
A plane chartered in Mexico flew to the Kitchener, Ont., airport to pick up the consultant, the security team and their gear. It was stopped by Canadian authorities in Gander, Nfld., but eventually allowed to proceed.
The consultant toured 72 sites bombed by NATO, and only eight were military installations, he said.
“The media say they bombed this and that and they took out anti-aircraft. That’s all crap. It’s all garbage.”
But Mr. Peters said the fact-finding mission was financed by Saadi in an attempt to get out a side of the Libya story he felt was not being covered by the media.
Mr. Peters returned to Libya for the last time in August. He said he was the only Canadian on Saadi’s security team. The others were from Australia, New Zealand, Iraq and Russia, all former special forces’ members.
He said they had planned to take Saadi out of the country on a day they had heard the Niger border would not be patrolled, but they could not wait.
“We decided to go right now, and when we got across the border they were being patrolled, that’s why we got pulled over.”
Authorities in Niger stopped the convoy on Sept. 11, but allowed Saadi to stay on humanitarian grounds. He is believed to be living under house arrest in a luxurious villa next to the presidential palace in the capital Niamey.
“He’s comfortable,” Mr. Peters said. “He’s in a 3½-acre compound. He’s fine. He’s waiting for his movements to be allowed. So he’s not going to move yet. The reason is, he wants to travel when this is all over. If he moves now and he’s got a no movement ban on him, it’ll make it difficult later.”
Saadi said in a statement from his lawyer this week he was “shocked and outraged by the vicious brutality which accompanied the murders of his father and brother.”
Mr. Peters said the fight for Libya was not over.
“People say, ‘Oh, it’s going to settle down, everyone’s got to pull out.’ Don’t believe it’s going to settle down because there are still three brothers there that are very, very angry. And three brothers that have a lot of money.
“And they’ve still got that money. We just purchased, brand-new, three Land Rovers, bullet-proof. We paid cash for it. That means there’s money around.”
Story here.
Road trip! American student joins rebels in fight for Qaddafi stronghold
Bradley Hope
Sep 1, 2011
Chris Jeon, 21, a student at at University of California – Los Angeles, decided to travel to Libya to join the rebels for the last six weeks of his summer vacation. Here he is surrounded by rebels who are amassing about 130km from Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown and stronghold.
At the centre of a circle of cheering rebel soldiers near Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown this week stood an improbable figure who gives new meaning to the term “road trip”.
Chris Jeon calls home
The ‘dude with the AK47’ rings his family from Libya to tell them he’s OK: Full story here
For more from The National on the struggle to control Libya, click here
Chris Jeon, a 21-year-old university student from Los Angeles, California,shrugging cooly, declared: “It is the end of my summer vacation, so I thought it would be cool to join the rebels. This is one of the only real revolutions” in the world.
In a daring, one might even say foolhardy, decision two weeks ago, Mr Jeon flew on a one-way ticket from Los Angeles to Cairo. He then travelled by train to Alexandria and by a series of buses to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. From there, he hitched a ride with rebels heading west towards the Libyan capital of Tripoli. After a 400km (248-mile) trek across the desolate North African landscape, he was now in the town of An Nawfaliyah, the toast of his comrades and a newly anointed road warrior.
“How do you fire this thing?” he asked on Wednesday as a bearded rebel handed him an AK-47. Locating the trigger of the assault rifle and switching off the safety, Mr Jeon fired it in the air in two short bursts.
“I want to fight in Sirte!” he proclaimed, using hand gestures and pointing west towards Sirte. Whether the rebels understood him was far from clear. “It’s hard to communicate. I don’t really speak any Arabic,” he said.
Nevertheless, the rebels have clearly taken to the mathematics student with no obvious political leanings who decided to slum it as an Arab Spring revolutionary before going back to his calculator for fall semester.
At first glance, Mr Jeon looked like someone who took a wrong turn on their way to the beach or the Santa Monica Pier. He wore a blue basketball jersey emblazoned with a script “Los Angeles” and the number 44. The rest of his outfit, including army camouflage trousers, a grey-and-black kaffiyeh on his head, clear safety glasses and a bullet hanging on a necklace, came courtesy of the rebels, he said. He had been sleeping in the homes of local families or in the open air with the insurgents.
On Wednesday, Mr Jeon was carrying a Russian-made 12-gauge shotgun, not a typical accessory for a student strolling the country-club campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, where he expects to graduate next May.
His new mates have even bestowed on him a moniker that is a mish-mash of the names of local tribes and areas: Ahmed El Maghrabi Saidi Barga. When communication invariably reaches an impasse, he merely repeats his name and the rebels erupt in raucous cheers.
Although Mr Jeon did not arrive in Libya in time to catch the liberation of Tripoli, he has seen history unfold. He was aboard one of the first cars to roar into An Nawfiliyah last weekend, armed with his shotgun and a camera that no longer works because the battery is dead. “I have great footage,” he said.
As with most students, money is a concern. He did not buy a round-trip airplane ticket, he explained: “If I get captured or something, I don’t want to waste another US$800 [Dh2,900].”
As he waited along with the rebels this week for what many expect in the coming days will be the climactic battle for Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold of Sirte, Mr Jeon wondered how he would deal with the inevitable question, “How did you spend your summer vacation?”
Only a few friends back in Los Angeles knew his true plans, he admitted. His family? Well, they thought he was going on a different trip.
As he recalled that deliberately vague version of his itinerary, it dawned on Mr Jeon that he might be blowing his cover by speaking with a reporter on a far-flung stretch of desert more than 11,200 kms (7,000 miles) from home.
“Whatever you do, don’t tell my parents,” he pleaded. “They don’t know I’m here.”
Story here.
With Gaddafi dead, Matthew VanDyke, who joined Libyan rebels, finally returns to Md.
By Tara Bahrampour
November 5, 2011
Eight months after he disappeared into the black hole of Libya’s civil war, and in defiance of predictions that he was dead in the desert, Matthew VanDyke touched down Saturday night at the airport near his Baltimore home.
VanDyke, 32, had been a freelance journalist and filmmaker, but he said Saturday night that he had gone to Libya to become a freedom fighter.
“Victory!” he said, holding up a new Libyan flag at Baltimore- Washington International Marshall Airport. “We won!”
VanDyke left for Libya in February, days after the uprising against Moammar Gaddafi began. In earlier travels through the Middle East and North Africa, he had visited Libya and made friends there.
He told his family that he hoped to document that country’s extraordinary events as a coda to a film and book he was working on. But that was not his true goal, he said Saturday night. “You don’t tell your mother and girlfriend that you’re going to go fight in a war,” he explained.
While on a reconnaissance mission six days after he arrived in Libya, he was caught by surprise when the frontline shifted in Gaddafi’s favor. He was held in solitary confinement for six months in the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.
VanDyke was not the only Westerner to be caught by Gaddafi’s forces, but in other cases Gaddafi officials generally acknowledged that they were being held and they were released.
VanDyke’s fate, however, remained a mystery. Despite the efforts of the State Department, Human Rights Watch, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Hungarian and Turkish diplomats, Gaddafi officials never said they had him.
Ignoring advice to move on and accept that he probably wasn’t coming back, his mother, Sherry VanDyke, rallied local officials and the news media to keep her son’s story alive. In July, a rumor surfaced that he was in Abu Salim. Human rights officials visited but could not find him.
Then, in August, as rebels routed Gaddafi loyalists in Tripoli, his girlfriend in Baltimore got a call. It was VanDyke. He had escaped from the prison after the guards had fled. He was dazed and had lost weight; the only clothing he had was his prison uniform.
And he had no intention of coming home while Gaddafi was at large. Instead, he joined the fighting in Sirte. “I wasn’t going to leave until Gaddafi was out of power,” he said. “And he’s gone, so I’m home.”
Thin, bearded and wearing rebel fatigues and a kaffiyeh on his head, he said: “I think I’m going to start training for the next Arab revolution. This is spreading.”
Story here.
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Deon Odendall And South African Mercenaries
Gaddafi’s SA soldiers
De Wet Potgieter
Oct 25 2011?A team of South African mercenaries helped Muammar Gaddafi’s family out of the war zone of Tripoli, Libya’s capital, to hide out in Algeria, prior to the Libyan despot’s killing in Sirte last week.?The team returned to South Africa within a week of the successful clandestine operation. Not so lucky was a second team, which went to support Gaddafi’s escape to Niger, but got caught in the fire fight between the dictator’s henchmen and Nato.?The second team was allegedly cornered by Libyan freedom fighters, which led to one South African’s death and numerous casualties among the rest of the mercenaries.?The first team of 24 men launched the audacious covert operation at the beginning of September to spirit Gaddafi’s wife and three surviving children away to safety in Algeria. A week later the team arrived safely back in South Africa.?“The first team was a mixed bag of former South African policemen and soldiers,” sources told The New Age. But the second team of 19 former South African policemen were not so lucky.
They were part of the security for Gaddafi’s convoy to neighbouring Niger when they were attacked by Nato forces and got pinned down in fierce fighting outside Sirte last week. The team has since gone to ground after the death of Gaddafi – who called himself Brother Leader.?“The 19 missing in Libya are all ex-police officers,” said The New Age’s intelligence source on Monday.?Describing last week’s involvement of South African mercenaries in efforts to extract the former Libyan dictator as “ill-fated from the outset”, the source said the second team might have been under the impression that the extraction of Gaddafi had been sanctioned by the UN.?Two separate teams of South African mercenaries were recruited in August on behalf of Gaddafi as part of the elaborate plan to protect and extract the despot and his family to safety.?According to sources, the interviews for the two teams were conducted in Sandton and Cape Town by an international recruitment company, but without either’s knowledge of the other’s existence. The South Africans mercenaries were apparently paid $15000 (R125000) each.?Interviews for the extraction operations were conducted on August 17 at the Balalaika Hotel in Sandton by Sarah Penfold, who operates from Kenya for a British mercenary outfit. The New Age has seen copies of an email sent to a former SA Special Forces operative, inviting him for an interview. The first mercenary group left South Africa two days after the interviews, flying from OR Tambo Airport to Dubai.
From there they flew to Tunisia, which shares borders with Algeria and Libya, where they were issued with firearms. They then travelled by road into Libya. Gaddafi’s wife, Safiya, his daughter, Aisha, and his sons, Hannibal and Mohammed, accompanied by their children, were escorted to Algeria.?Former police commissioner George Fivaz told The New Age yesterday that his security firm, Fivaz and Associates, was contacted from London at the weekend by people urgently looking for an air ambulance to evacuate about 50 wounded and badly burned war victims from Libya.?Fivaz said his firm did not provide this type of service and he believed there was, in any case, no such large air ambulance available in South Africa.?Mark Young, spokesperson of Criticare in London, said the company had been contracted for casavac operations in Libya but he had no knowledge of any South Africans needing evacuation.?He said Criticare was looking for a big air ambulance and had been told he might find one in South Africa. “We contacted Saafair in but we were told their plane had been contracted to the UN,” Young said.?There was an air ambulance with the capacity of 10 to 20 patients available in Austria, but there were problems with the insurance because it had to fly into war zones.?“We have to evacuate five to 10 wounded and badly burned victims a day for the next two months from Libya as part of our contract,” Young said. The victims included Libyans, Nato forces and other casualties from around the world, he said.
Story here.
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S. African mercenaries ‘helping Kadhafi son’
Oct 27, 2011
South African mercenaries who allegedly took part in Moamer Kadhafi’s failed escape bid are still taking care of his son Seif al-Islam, the Beeld newspaper said on Thursday.
The South Africans were hired by a company with close ties to Kadhafi, training his presidential guard and handling some of his offshore financial dealings, the Afrikaans-language paper said.
South Africans have also reportedly been involved in transporting Kadhafi’s gold, diamonds and foreign currency to Niger, and helping his wife and three of children flee Tripoli, the paper said.
Planes are waiting at a Johannesburg airport and in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to fly the South Africans out of Libya, the Beeld said.
The group of South Africans includes former soldiers and policemen. Some of them were killed one week ago in the attack on the convoy that left Kadhafi dead, it said.
“They are all seasoned operators abroad and apparently become involved only by invitation in operations for which they receive large sums in US dollars,” it said.
Some of the South Africans were also in the group of mercenaries that staged a failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea in 2004, it added.
Another Afrikaans paper, Rapport, at the weekend quoted one of the South Africans who claimed to be in the group as saying that their attempt to extract Kadhafi from Libya was a “huge failure”.
Deon Odendaal, who described himself as a spy, said the group believed NATO wanted Kadhafi to leave Libya but the convoy came under attack as they tried to take him from his hometown in Sirte.
“It was a gruesome, gruesome orgy,” Odendaal told the paper.
“The poor thing screamed like a pig,” Odendaal said of Kadhafi’s final moments.
Story here.
Head of French Company Is Killed in Libyan City
By KAREEM FAHIM and MAÏA de la BAUME
May 12, 2011
The president of a French private security company who had scheduled a meeting on Thursday to discuss business opportunities with opponents of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi died in a hospital here on Wednesday, apparently after he was shot in the stomach, the French Foreign Ministry and rebel officials here in Benghazi said.
A rebel posed for a photograph recently outside the rebel headquarters in Benghazi, where a Frenchman was shot on Wednesday.
The circumstances that led to the shooting were murky on Thursday, as was the status of four of the executive’s colleagues, who were reported to have been detained. No one seemed to be sure who was holding them: Benghazi’s civil prosecutor referred questions to military prosecutors, who in turn said they could not comment on a continuing case.
“We are very sorry for what happened,” said Gen. Ahmed al-Ghatrani, a rebel military spokesman, who blamed “gangs that the old regime used,” without providing additional details.
In Paris, the Foreign Ministry released an equally murky statement, asserting that the police in Benghazi had detained five French citizens on Wednesday night, and that “one of them was hurt by a bullet and died during the night in Benghazi hospital.”
The statement did not identify any of those people, but it said: “Our representative on the spot is demanding to see our detained compatriots. He is in contact with the local authorities to eamine the situation of those held.”
The authorities did not release the name of the dead man, but several people said he was Pierre Marziali, the president of Secopex, a private security company based in Carcassonne, France.
The confusion about the shooting contributed to a growing feeling that a shadow war is simmering in Benghazi between the many militias under the rebel umbrella and former Qaddafi loyalists or other groups with unknown allegiances. No one seemed able to say who had attacked the Secopex team, and no one seemed to know, or was willing to say, exactly why the security contractors were in Libya.
A woman who answered the telephone at Secopex’s offices on Thursday, sounding shaken, said she “had no information” on the company’s team in Libya.
Secopex has been said in many news reports to be the only private military security company in France. According to its Web site, Mr. Marziali co-founded the company in 2003 and it specializes, among other things, in training bodyguards.
Agence France-Presse reported in 2008 that the company had brokered a deal with the Somali government to create a unified coast guard and to train the bodyguards of Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, then Somalia’s president.
A former employee at Secopex who spoke only on condition of anonymity said, “Mr. Marziali went to Libya on a mission which, I believe, had been ordered by France.”
Because France has not sent troops to Libya, Secopex was engaged for “protection missions,” the man said. Those assertions could not be independently confirmed, but several countries, including France, have sent military advisers to aid the rebels, who have struggled against Colonel Qaddafi’s more seasoned and better equipped forces.
Rebel officials, in the past, have said they would consider the possibility of hiring private companies to help secure vital public works, including oil fields.
The former employee described Mr. Marziali, a former paratrooper, as “pleasant, audacious and well connected.”
In Benghazi, the Secopex team had stayed for at least a month in a residential neighborhood in a two-story private villa with a high wall surrounding it. They told one resident that they worked in “logistics support.” By midnight on Wednesday, the house was empty, a neighbor said. Several pickups like the ones used by some of the rebel militias arrived at the house, and men went inside, returning with several pieces of luggage.
A rebel spokesman said that Mr. Marziali had been scheduled to speak with the vice chairman of the opposition’s Transitional National Council, Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, rebel officials were at the morgue at Jalaa Hospital in Benghazi, apparently trying to identify Mr. Marziali, who had what appeared to be a bullet hole in his stomach.
General Ghatrani, the rebel military spokesman, said military investigators were cooperating with French diplomats.
Kareem Fahim reported from Benghazi, and Maïa de la Baume from Paris. Alison Smale contributed reporting from Paris.
Story here.
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Mario and Croatian Mercenaries
Gaddafi’s Fleeing Mercenaries Describe the Collapse of the Regime
By Jovo Martinovic
Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011
Right from the start, Mario, an ethnic Croatian artillery specialist from Bosnia, suspected it was a lost cause.
“My men were mainly from the south [of Libya] and Chad, and there were a few others from countries south of Libya,” said Mario, who spoke on condition that his last name not be published. A veteran of the wars of the former Yugoslavia, he had been hired by the Gaddafi regime to help fight the rebels and, later, NATO. “Discipline was bad, and they were too stupid to learn anything. But things were O.K. until the air strikes commenced. The other side was equally bad, if not worse. [Muammar] Gaddafi would have smashed the rebels had the West not intervened.” (See pictures of the lengthy battle for Libya.)
By early July, Mario said, more than 30% of the men under his command had deserted or defected to the rebel side. NATO missiles scored several direct hits on his forces, causing “significant casualties.” At that point in the war, he said, “military hardware stopped having the role it [once did]. We had to use camouflage and avoid open spaces.”
Away from the front, at the heart of the regime, mistrust and excess further undermined Gaddafi’s hold on power, Mario said. “Life in [Gaddafi’s] compound and shelters was so surreal, with partying, women, alcohol and drugs,” said Mario, 41. “One of the relatives of Gaddafi took me to one of his villas where they offered me anything I wanted. I heard stories about people being shot for fun and forced to play Russian roulette while spectators were making bets, like in the movies.”
Tension between two of Gaddafi’s sons contributed to the sense that Gaddafi’s cause was doomed. “I noticed profound rivalry between Gaddafi’s sons,” Mario said, speaking en route from the southern city of Sabha to Libya’s border with Niger. “Once, there was almost an armed clash between Mohammed’s and Saif [al-Islam]’s men. I saw one group interrogating the other at gunpoint, and then more of the other group arrived fully armed, and it was a standoff for several minutes, with both sides cursing each other.” (See portraits of refugees fleeing Libya.)
Mario respected and liked Gaddafi’s most prominent son, Saif al-Islam, who in 2009 threw himself a lavish 37th birthday party on the coast of the former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, one of Europe’s newest glamour spots for the superrich. The ties between the Gaddafi family and the former Yugoslavia stretch back to the days of Josep Broz Tito, Yugoslavia’s storied communist leader, who was a friend and ally of Gaddafi’s. Mario said that Gaddafi had hired several former Yugoslav fighters, most of them Serbs, to help him in his fight against NATO and the rebels. One by one, Mario said, these foreign advisers and commanders left Tripoli. Some senior Libyans joined them.
“I noticed that many Libyans pretended loyalty just out of fear and were just seeking a way to turn against [Gaddafi],” Mario said. “Many officers admitted to me they stood no chance against NATO, and one of them told me he was in touch with the people in Benghazi.” Benghazi is the rebel stronghold in the east of the country.
Mario left Tripoli 12 days ago after receiving a warning from a comrade. “Two weeks ago, a friend who brought me here told me I should leave Tripoli, as things were going to rapidly change and that deals have been made,” he said. He noticed Gaddafi’s South African mercenaries beginning to leave. Mario decided with a fellow mercenary to flee Tripoli. “I tried to get ahold of Saif before that, but he was beyond reach,” he said. “Later he called my companion to ask if we needed something and to say that they would win back all of Libya.” (See a brief history of Muammar Gaddafi’s 40-year rule.)
Another former Yugoslav soldier, a retired general in the old Yugoslav army and a longtime military adviser to Gaddafi, cut things tighter, leaving Tripoli on Aug. 21. The man, who spoke on condition that his name not be published, spoke to TIME as he traveled through Libya toward Tunisia. “Back there is chaos,” he said, referring to Tripoli, which was then being overrun by the rebel forces. “The whole system has collapsed. I knew it was coming. I haven’t spoken to [Gaddafi] in four weeks. He wouldn’t listen.”
Like Mario, the former general had sensed that the regime would soon fall. “Everything seemed normal until recently, but we could feel the deal breaking behind the stage,” he said. The former general, who had lived in Tripoli and ran a business there for many years, described Gaddafi as a “fool” and compared him to Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who took on NATO during the 1999 war in Kosovo and ultimately died in a prison cell at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. “You can’t fight NATO and play a stubborn lunatic like that guy,” the former general said.
Story here.
Libyan rebels ‘torturing suspected gaddafi mercenaries’
By Barney Henderson
12 Oct 2011
Libyan rebels are illegally holding and torturing up to 2,500 alleged mercenaries, many from sub-Saharan Africa, rights groups have claimed.
The mercenaries are being held by armed militias without warrants and are routinely beaten to force them to confess to pro-Gaddafi crimes, according to a report released on Wednesday by Amnesty International.
Rebels have reportedly established unofficial detention facilities that are run by local councils, local military council or armed brigades. The centres, seen by Amnesty, are equipped with torture devices such as ropes, sticks and rubber hoses.
“The authorities cannot simply allow this to carry on because they are in a ‘transitional’ phase. These people must be allowed to defend themselves properly or be released,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty regional deputy director.
“Arbitrary arrest and torture were a hallmark of Colonel al-Gaddafi’s rule. There is a real risk that without firm and immediate action, some patterns of the past might be repeated.”
Gaddafi regularly employed mercenaries to help defend him during his reign and reportedly recruited hundreds of fighters from Niger and Mali as protests against his dictatorship began in February.
However, Amnesty states innocent black Africans in Libya are now risk of arbitrary arrest, effectively being “abducted from their homes”.
In a further blow to the new administration, al-Qaeda’s new leader called on Libya’s rebels to protect their gains against “Western plots”, fuelling fears that al-Qaeda and its affiliates could seek to exploit a power vacuum in the region.
Ayman al-Zawahri claimed in an internet video posting that Nato will demand the rebels give up their Islamic faith as the country sets up a new government.
“They want the nonreligious and the atheists who don’t accept Sharia to rule the Islamic world,” he said.
Story here.