'Mercenary' trial in prison

[dArKeR]

Harare - A high court judge on Monday ordered that a court hearing for 70 alleged mercenaries, accused of plotting a coup in the government of Equatorial Guinea, would be held on Tuesday - inside the precincts of the maximum security prison they are detained in.

Judge Tedius Karwi said he accepted that prison authorities had only one truck to transport the 70 men a distance of 15km from Chikurubi prison to the Harare magistrate's court, and that vehicles needed for a military escort would break down.

The 70 are nationals of South Africa, Angola, Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo and one is Zimbabwean, although their lawyers say they all hold South African citizenship.

They are due to make their first mandatory appearance before a magistrate since they were arrested on March 7.

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1501774,00.html

1. Look at the example Bush has set for the world with Guantanamo Bay and holding and torturing people with no charges for years!!!!!!!! The whole world will start butching it's people in the name of the Bush Precedent. The world has fallen into murderous kaos in the name of Jesus Bush. Our American Corporate Media Whores are just as much responsible.

[DulceDecorum]

1. Kudos to Zimbabwe

and Equatorial Guinea upon apprehending Simon Mann and Nick du Toit, two of the most savage serial killers that the world has to offer.

Those two make Ted Bundy look like a choirboy.

Incidentally, the mercenaries have NOT REPEAT NOT been subjected to torture. They have a lawyer and have been visited by Amnesty International, among others. Their ONLY complaint is that they are "being given too much food."

I can think of hundreds of American men, women, and children who can only wish they were so lucky.

[R Hickey]

2. Perhaps mercenaries will think twice before they try that again

US registered plane? Humm...now how could that be?

What do the plane's owners have to say?

Here these guys thought they were going to overthrow a country, and now they're all in jail. Ha! Ha! Ha!

I hope they keep those 'Dogs of War' til Gitmo is closed, or hell freezes over, whichever happens last. Their plight is ironic, but I have no sympathy for them.

[dArKeR]

3. Why is the Whore Media calling these guys Mercenaries and not Terrorists?

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Do you know they were going to target civilians

rather than the armed forces? Most people trying to take over a country target the latter - which makes them mercenaries, rather than terrorists.

[DulceDecorum]

7. Executive Outcomes routinely massacres civilians

Remnants of the notorious Executive Outcomes, which shut down in 1999, are prominent in the coup plot.
Mohadi named Simon Witherspoon, a "known South African mercenary", as the apparent leader of the group and also mentioned Simon Mann, a former British Special Air Service member, as being among those arrested in Harare.
Witherspoon, Mann and Du Toit formed the basis of Executive Outcomes, said an analyst, who requested anonymity.
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=128&fArticleId=371551

Executive Outcomes now is reorganizing itself and considering a military contract to help the Islamic government in Khartoum wage war on the Christian civilians in the south of that nation.
During the 1990s, the United Nations, British government and Clinton administration officially frowned on mercenaries, soldiers serving for pay in foreign armies or at the behest of private firms. The U.N. passed formal legislation outlawing groups like Executive Outcomes.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26721

August 21, 1997
In April 1995 Sierra Rutile teamed up with a British company named Branch Energy, which is now controlled by Diamond Works, to bring in a South African mercenary outfit called Executive Outcomes to the country with the blessing of Valentine Strasser, the military ruler of Sierra Leone.
Once in country, Executive Outcomes employed traditional Sierra Leonian witchcraft hunters as scouts and brought in two of South Africa's most highly decorated air force pilots. The pilots initially had difficulty distinguishing between the rebels and civilians camped under the impenetrable canopy of vines and trees, but when the Sierra Leone military commander told them to ''kill everybody'' they obeyed orders according to accounts of the operation published in Harper's magazine. About a year later the new Sierra Leonian government terminated the Executive Outcomes contract, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, and was promptly overthrown in a coup. Reports indicate that a third intervention is now being planned. Last month Tim Spicer of Sandline International met with investors in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss ''strategy, logistics and training'' to ''convert 40,000 militia into an effective fighting force'' in Sierra Leone.
Sandline is controlled by minerals speculators Robert Friedland and Anthony Buckingham, the two principal investors in Diamond Works, a mining company with extensive interests in Sierra Leone, who were also instrumental in the 1995 mercenary interventions. Sandline were also responsible for the botched attempt to retake Bougainville, in the South Pacific, by mercenaries earlier this year.
http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/970821/97082102.html

Dick Cheney, George W. Bush's running mate, is a far cry from the "aw, shucks" kind of Wyoming cowboy-politician painted by Republican strategists. When he was at the helm of the Dallas-based oil services giant Halliburton, Inc., from 1995 until his nomination, the company and its subsidiaries--Brown & Root and Dresser Industries--were deeply enmeshed in the military-intelligence complex.
<snip>
What's more, Halliburton has been involved with so-called private military companies. Brown & Root has acted in concert with U.S. mercenary companies like AirScan and MPRI (recently acquired by L-3 Communications) from Angola to Croatia.
http://www.progressive.org/wm0900.htm

The growing influence of private corporations in the war business is likely to continue, according US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In an interview last year he said the Pentagon ‘will pursue additional opportunities to outsource and privatise’ and defence analysts are predicting the loss of a further 200,000 jobs in the US armed forces over the next few years.
The growing privatisation and contracting out of military activities is an ominous development and a serious challenge for the international peace movement. It is a new, unaccountable and potentially destabilising component of the global strategy of the major military states - the United States, the UK, France and Israel - and at its present rate of growth, could soon rival and surpass the size of conventional armed forces, transforming the way in which modern war and foreign policy will be conducted. It is a development that we ignore at our peril.
http://www.banthebomb.org/magazine/nfs0402/private.shtml

Meanwhile, concentration camps are being built and activated WITHIN the US.
Got civilians?

[seemslikeadream]

9. Executive Outcomes Leads to Bush

Corporate Mercenaries - Executive Outcomes Leads to Bush


Executive Outcomes is the most infamous mercenary company in operation today. Unlike traditional mercenary companies, it operates as the heavy partner in a web of related companies. Sandline international is such a sister company: 170 elite South African dogs of war were hired to crush the Bougainville freedom Fighters for $22m. Just another job for the likes of Sandline international? Paul Vernon investigates...

Set up in 1993 by Tony Buckingham and Simon Mannl <1>, Executive outcomes (EO) has worked in Asia, Africa and South America. Most of it's personnel are hired from South Africa.

Buckingham is the chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas, which is now registered in the (tax-free) Bahamas. When EO was hired by the Sierra Leone government to crush people's revolt, Heritage received much of the payment in the form of mining rights. Sir David Steel MP happens to be a director of Heritage as well as a close friend of Buckingham. Recently Sierra Leone was thrown back into chaos with another military coup.

Eeben Barlow, the present CEO of Executive Outcomes, is a veteran of the Civil Co-operation Bureau, which allegedly assassinated antiapartheid activists. Barlow is the frontman for the group he told Newsweek (2) in February: "I'm a professional soldier. It's not about politics. I have a job to do. I do it." EO is thought to have a annual turnover of more that £20 million.

The South African government, with help from officials from the United Nations, has begun to draft proposals of legislation aimed to counter what officials called "the increasing frequency with which our soldiers-of-fortune are operating overseas".(7)

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/magazine/issue4/cw4f8.html

Executive Outcomes ties lead to London and Bush
Executive Intelligence Review January 31, 1997, pp. 42-43
by Roger Moore and Linda de Hoyos

Exposes appearing on both sides of the Atlantic on the mercenary group Executive Outcomes, threaten to blow the lid off the British intelligence nexus already identified as responsible for the February 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and for the current cataclysmic destabilization of Africa on behalf of circles associated with the Queen of England's Privy Council and Sir George Bush.
The exposes appeared in the French daily {Le Figaro} on Jan. 16, the {London Observer} on Jan. 17, and the February issue of the American magazine {Harper's.}
Executive Outcomes is the mercenary arm of a vast
network of British-South African corporations dealing in gold, diamonds, and oil, primarily, but not exclusively, in Africa, that come under the umbrella of Strategic Resources Corporation, headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa. Described universally as an ``advance guard of a corporate network that includes mining, oil, and construction companies,'' Executive Outcomes is active in 13 African countries, including Uganda. For its services, it demands a lien or franchise on the exportable raw resources, particularly mineral wealth, of the client country--in the same fashion as the British East India Company of the 18th and 19th centuries, which in turn functioned as the ``advance guard'' of the British monarchy.
Executive Outcomes was incorporated offshore, on the Isle of Man, in 1993, by Anthony Buckingham, a British businessman, and Simon Mann, a former British officer, the {Observer} reported, based on a leak to it from British intelligence. Buckingham is also chief executive of Heritage Oil and Gas, which in turn is linked to the Canadian firm Ranger Oil. Other firms operating out of the same headquarters in Chelsea Plaza 107, London, include Branch International Ltd. and Branch Mining Ltd.
Preliminary investigation by {EIR} has further determined that Executive Outcomes lies at the heart of the British monarch's raw materials cartels and secret intelligence operations, in conjunction with Bush's rogue apparat:
Through Sir David Steel, a former leader of the Liberal Party, Executive Outcomes and, presumably, its deployment, is a subsumed operation of the Queen's Privy Council. Steel is a close friend of EO's Buckingham, and is on the board of directors of EO's sister firm, Heritage Oil and Gas, according to {Le Figaro.} In 1977, Steel was inducted into the Privy Council, making him the youngest member of Britain's highest-level policy-making body.
The links between Executive Outcomes and Ranger Oil point to operational ties with the Bronfman family of Canada, whose scion, Edgar Bronfman of Toronto Broncorp, sits on the board of directors of Ranger. Recently, the Bronfman family merged its mammoth real estate firm, Trizec, with Barrick Gold, whose senior advisory board includes Sir George Bush. Barrick Gold is deeply involved in northeastern Zaire, where it has purchased 83,000 square kilometers of land. Zairean sources report that the so-called Zairean rebel Laurent Kabila is no more than a mercenary for Barrick and Anglo American Corp., sponsored by the British Crown-backed Ugandan and Rwandan militaries. Executive Outcomes, {Le Figaro} and other sources further verify, is deeply entrenched in Uganda, the key British marcher-lord state in the region.

http://www.aboutsudan.com/action/geopolitical/executive_outcomes.htm

Rent-a-Coup: Who's Who


Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)

March 12, 2004
Posted to the web March 12, 2004

Sam Sole And Stefaans Brümmer


The men behind the alleged Equatorial Guinea coup plot represent a who's who of South Africa's mercenary market - but key players also have links to the American and British security establishments.

In Harare, where 67 suspected mercenaries were arrested last Sunday, Zimbabwean Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi claimed later in the week that Britain's MI6 intelligence service, the United States's CIA and the Spanish secret service had been involved.


This, Mohadi said, had been confessed by Simon Mann, one of the mission's principal planners. Mann was arrested in Harare alongside his "troops", who had arrived separately by Boeing 727 from South Africa.

Mohadi's claim should be taken with a pinch of salt, as the Zimbabwean government has made a habit of implicating the United Kingdom and the US in latter-day colonial plots. But it is intriguing that both Mann and his alleged principal co-conspirator, Nic du Toit, do have direct or indirect links with the security establishments in these countries.

Here are some of the key players:

Simon Mann

Mann has a long association with private military companies, including the trailblazer in the genre, South Africa's Executive Outcomes.

Zimbabwe's Mohadi claims Mann was promised a cash payment of £1-million and oil exploitation rights in Equatorial Guinea for his part in arranging a coup against President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Mann was one of the founders of Sandline International, a London-based private military company that worked closely with Executive Outcomes, the company formed in 1989 by former apartheid special forces operatives.

Executive Outcomes and later Sandline played a key role in major private military interventions, first in Angola in support of the MPLA government against Jonas Savimbi's Unita rebels and later in Sierra Leone, in the latter case allegedly with the tacit support of the British security services.

Mann's background made him the perfect intermediary for the negotiation and conduct of private operations in support of British military, diplomatic or commercial interests. A member of a prominent British brewing family, he attended Eton before joining the Scots Guards and later the elite Special Air Service. After leaving the SAS Mann specialised in computer security systems.

In the early 1990s Mann linked up with another ex-military man, Anthony Buckingham, who had oil interests. The Angolan government reportedly approached Canadian company Ranger Oil, with which Buckingham was involved, to help protect the country's oil installations.

That led to the comprehensive contract Executive Outcomes clinched to shore up the MPLA government and turned the tide against Savimbi's rebels.

Nic du Toit

Du Toit is understood to be a former SADF special forces operator, who later also worked for Executive Outcomes.

According to a 1999 paper by researcher Kareen Pech, Military Technical Services (MTS), the company represented by Du Toit in the alleged coup plot, was set up in 1989 under retired Major-General Tai Minnaar to procure Soviet-issue helicopters and provide private military support services.

Pech wrote: "Although some companies, like MTS, have the same business interests, cross shareholdings and even shared personnel, Executive Outcomes directors denied that they were associated with these companies."

Minnaar died in mysterious circumstances - allegedly due to poisoning - in September 2001. His attempt to export to the US a so-called stockpile of biological warfare agents, developed under apartheid South Africa's chemical-biological warfare programme, was revealed by the M&G in 2002.

That attempt was made in conjunction with two former CIA operators and with the knowledge of the FBI - which apparently blew the plan and shopped Minnaar before it could be carried out.

Niel Steyl

Steyl was the pilot of the Boeing stopped in Harare, and is under arrest there.

More is known about his brother, Crause Steyl, who has also been implicated - by documentary evidence suggesting that his company, an air ambulance service, was at least an intended partner

http://allafrica.com/stories/200403120716.html

'Enraged' that deal scuttled'

The Afrikaans daily, Beeld, reported that the arms for the alleged coup would have been supplied by ZDI. Dube was reportedly "enraged" that the aircraft was impounded and the $180 000 transaction scuttled.

The paper identified the pilots as Niel Steyl, a South African commercial pilot and Hendrik Hamman, a Namibian. Both had in the past worked for defunct mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes.

Logo executive Charles Burrow, speaking from London, called the incident a "misunderstanding".

The aircraft, flight planned to Bujumbura in Burundi, were taking personnel to the DRC. What appeared to be military items aboard was mining equipment, he claimed.

The company's cryptic website listed operations in places as diverse as China and Pakistan, Venezuela and Guyana and African countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, the two Congos, Angola, Zambia and Mozambique.

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1496029,00....

I'm just beginning to read "warbusiness"


very long but very good.

http://www.zwnews.com/warbusiness.doc

one tiny snip:

In April 2001, an MPRI representative met with the Pentagon’s regional director for Central Africa to discuss the company’s hopes of winning the contract to train Equatorial Guinea’s forces. “They may need our help or moral support,” Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski wrote in a memo on the meeting, obtained by ICIJ under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. She quoted the MPRI representative as saying that Equatorial Guinea was “the Kuwait of the Gulf of Guinea” and, in a briefing paper three months later, advanced that characterization to “a possible ‘Kuwait of Africa’ with huge oil reserves” that was “US-friendly for both investment and security reasons.” Kwiatkowski also noted in her April memo that the highest-ranking U.S. official to meet with Obiang when he visited Washington early in 2001 was an assistant secretary of agriculture – that after French President Jacques Chirac had spared time to meet with him.

Despite concerns about Equatorial Guinea’s human rights record, Obiang’s currency rose dramatically after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. When he visited the United States as it marked the first anniversary of the attacks, Obiang was among 10 African leaders to meet with President George Bush for talks on the prospect of war with Iraq and peace and development on the African continent.


ended up here because of this:

If you've been reading the news the last few days you may have noticed this odd and somewhat mysterious story of a US-registered cargo plane loaded with 64 "mercernaries" and various military equipment which was impounded

Sunday night at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe "after its owners had made a false declaration of its cargo and crew."

When asked about it on Monday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said "We have no indication this aircraft is connected to the U.S. government."

That seemed like a rather less than unequivocal response. And behind the scenes US government officials said they didn't believe the US government had any connection with this operation. But they wanted to make sure before saying anything definitive.

Now, if you look at the press accounts, what's caught people's attention is the US registry of the plane. Specifically, it's registered to a company called Dodson Aviation, which is based in Kansas.

Now, Dodson says they sold the plane to a "reputable" firm in South Africa about a week ago. "I think they were going to use it for charter flights," company director Robert Dodson told the Associated Press.

Now here's a little more detail.

Dodson Aviation of Kansas has a South African subsidiary, Dodson International Parts SA Ltd (According to their website, "Dodson International Parts SA (Pty) Ltd is the African division of United States based companies Dodson International Parts Inc. and Dodson Aviation. The company was established in 1998 and is based at Wonderboom Airport, Pretoria.") And it was from this subsidiary's hangar at an airport just north of Pretoria that the aforementioned mercenaries boarded the plane.

Now, here's where this gets a little murky.

I wanted to find out more about Dodson International Parts SA Ltd. What I found something out about was a company that sounded very similar: a South African company called Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts.

They're also in the airplane business.

Not exactly the same name. But remember, the South African company is the subsidiary of two American companies, Dodson Aviation and Dodson International. If these aren't the same company, or closely related companies, I'd figure they often get confused for one another.

In any case, here's what I found about Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts.

They come up in the December 2000 Report of the Panel of Experts to the United Nations on Sierra Leone, in the section of the report dealing with the arms trade.

Here's the section that caught my eye (italics added) ...

187. Fred Rindel a retired officer of the South African Defence Force and former Defence Attaché to the United States, has played a key role in the training of a Liberian anti-terrorist unit, consisting of Liberian soldiers and groups of foreigners, including citizens of Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Niger and The Gambia.
188. The panel interviewed Mr Rindel extensively. Rindel was contracted as a security consultant by President Charles Taylor in September 1998, and training started in November 1998. The contract included consultancy services and strategic advice to convert Charles Taylor's former rebel militia into a professional unit. The Anti-Terrorist Unit is used in Liberia to protect government buildings, the Executive Mansion and the international airport, and to provide VIP Security and the protection of foreign embassies. The numbers trained were approximately 1200. Because of negative media attention, Rindel cancelled his contract in Liberia in August 2000.

189. In 1998, ECOMOG identified a plane, registration number N71RD, owned by a South African company, Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts, as having carried weapons to Robertsfield in September of that year. The plane is a Gulfstream 14-seater business jet that cannot be used for arms transport, but there are other relevant connections. Fred Rindel was the owner of Dodson. The company was closed on 31 December 1998, but during the period under investigation, the plane was leased to, and operated by, Greater Holdings (Liberia) Ltd., a company with gold and diamond concessions in Liberia. The plane was used for the transport of the Greater Holdings' staff to and from Liberia.



Mr. Rindel's name came up earlier in 2000 in testimony at the UN Security Council by then-UN Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke in a discussion of Sierra Leone (italics added) ...

In regard to arms trafficking to Sierra Leone, Mr. Chairman, we remain concerned and I would like to add a few more items to the record. The principal Africa countries involved in arms trafficking to the RUF - though they deny it - include Burkina Faso, Liberia and Libya.
In 1999, planes landed in Ouagadougou, allegedly coming from the Ukraine, with several tons of small arms and ammunition. This incident, which the Ukrainians say has stopped, is one that we believe should be brought to the attention of your committee.

In regard to trafficking, arms brokers have played a vital role in keeping the RUF supplied with weapons and other military materiel. A well-known arms and diamond dealer in Sierra Leone, Zief Morganstein, in July 1999 arranged for a Continental Aviation-based charter out of Dakar to fly a shipment of small arms from Bulgaria to Sierra Leone. Last year the RUF received 68 tons of weapons from Bulgaria, which Morganstein may have helped arrange. There have been other connections between former government officials from South Africa during its Apartheid regime who now operate as private individuals, including Fred Rindel, the South African Defense Attache in Washington, who now works as a security consultant in Liberia and trains Liberian troops and RUF insurgents. There are other charges about other businessmen who are reportedly helping the Sierra Leone government coming from various countries around the world.



Now, I've scanned the news coverage of this and I haven't seen any mention of this seeming connection. So perhaps these are two utterly unrelated companies?

As of Tuesday the situation in Zimbabwe seems to be calming down, though now there are apparently fears in Equatorial Guinea that these mercenaries were somehow intended to assist a coup in that country. (No, I can't keep up either.) "Some 15 mercenaries have been arrested here," the country's Information Minister Agustin Nse Nfumu told Reuters. "It was connected with that plane in Zimbabwe. They were the advance party of that group."

Equatorial Guinea is next door to Gabon. And Joe Wilson used to be the US Ambassador there back in the day. So maybe he can make some sense of this. I can't. But I'd be very interested to talk to the investigators who put together that UN report and see if there's any connection between Dodson International Parts SA Ltd and Dodson Aviation Maintenance and Spare Parts.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

[seemslikeadream]

5. Mercenary - a soldier hired into foreign service

sounds more acceptable, especially when their hired by a US or British company.

[DulceDecorum]

8. Private Military Companies -- a recently coined euphemism for mercenaries

1980
In "Operation Winter," with the collusion of British government monitors in Rhodesia, Rhodesian special operations assets are reportedly transferred covertly to South Africa. These assets supposedly include the Rhodesian SAS, the CIO and its agents, and the Selous Scouts, as well as black "mercenaries" and "the poisoners and their poisons," all of which are incorporated into the appropriate South African departments. British and American planes may have taken part in the transfer of men and equipment.
—Jeremy Brickhill, "Zimbabwe's Poisoned Legacy: Secret War in Southern Africa," Covert Action Quarterly 43 (Winter 1992-93), pp. 58-60.
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/SAfrica/Chemical/2446.html

Executive Outcomes (EO) head Eeben Barlow recently told a South African reporter that "War and anarchy will reign in Africa because it has been exploited by people making promises. The Cold War left a huge vacuum and I identified a niche in the market. "We are selling the business of surviving."
http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/mil/exec.shtml

Since 1994, the U.S. Defense Department has entered into 3,061 contracts with 12 U.S.-based private military companies, a review of government documents showed. Not every contract was for military services; although records obtained from the Pentagon were not specific enough to determine the purpose of each of the contracts.
But private military companies -- a recently coined euphemism for mercenaries - are just one face of the increasing trend of the privatization of war, the investigation found. A small group of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East have profited from this business of war.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/6984

According to Mabasa Sasa:
There really is no difference between Sand Line and Al Qaeda, Executive Outcomes and the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Pentagon and CIA and the Basque separatist ETA.
This new breed of legalised terrorists are responsible for fanning the flames of war and bloodshed on the continent as they train village militias and turn them into deadly fighting and killing machines. They are after all plainly and simply terrorists.
http://www.africaonline.co.zw/mirror/stage/archive/040314/national29072.html

[seemslikeadream]

6. Dogs of war wreak havoc in Africa

Mabasa Sasa

IN as much as revolutionary pan-African movements have shaped the history of the continent, another malevolent force that follows no rules and has no ideological ties with anyone has played a sinister role.

This force, a hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) hand that bears no permanent allegiances has scarred the face of the continent, though sometimes it has been a helping hand.

It bows to the tune of the pied piper, the ‘moneyed’ one that is, and cares not about territorial integrity and international law.

Some have called them “soldiers of fortune” while others refer to them as “dogs of war.” The media has a tendency to label them mercenaries when in actual fact they are nothing short of hired killers, assassins or terrorists.

These terrorists have for a long time been used to destabilise entire regions and unseat governments that are considered unsuitable for the designs of the rogue states that fund such clandestine military operations.

Mercenaries or terrorists have been active in the majority of both pre and post colonial African wars with the traditional bankrollers being the Central Intelligence Agency, MI5 and MI6, and the South African malcontents created by apartheid and other such institutions.

Keith Somerville says, “One thing practically all of them (wars on the continent) have in common is the role of foreign mercenaries.” The CIA officially began operations in 1947 and since then it has been accused of forming alliances of convenience with just about anybody they can use to further American interests. These include drug traffickers, gunrunners and terrorists. All too often, former agents who spill the beans have substantiated the accusations. The historical problems that the former Zaire has experienced and still continues to grapple with have been linked to mercenaries. In fact, Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by terrorists hired by the CIA and the Belgians in an operation entitled ‘Celeste’.

http://www.africaonline.co.zw/mirror/stage/archive/040314/national29072.html