Bob Denard (pictured later in the article) - the legendary French soldier of fortune, who for many decades took part in coups d'état and engaged in mercenarism throughout Africa and the Middle East, died on October 13, 2007, at 78th year of life.
The death was announced by his sister Georgette Garnier. The cause was not reported, but it is known that the "king of mercenaries" suffered from Alzheimer's disease for several years.
Fighter against communism
The tall, elegant man who inspired Frederic Forsythe to write the novel Dogs of War about European soldiers of fortune in Africa, Bob Denard, a military man, never felt the need to apologize for his actions, claiming in an interview that he was soldier of the West participating in the fight against communism.
"It's true, I wasn't a saint," he said in 1993. - In combat, it is impossible to do otherwise. But I wouldn't still be here if I was doing really reprehensible things.”
King's Permission
Instead of talking about yourself as a mercenaryor a pirate, he preferred to be called a corsair. “The corsairs in France received written permission from the king to attack foreign ships,” he explained. “I did not have such a permit, but I had passports issued by the special services.”
Thus, since the early 1960s, he has not been able to deny himself participation in either supporting or overthrowing governments in former European colonies and other conflict zones. From the looks of it, he had no problem finding recruits for the underground world of Soldiers of Fortune.
He and his followers, who boasted of their nickname les Affreux ("The Terrible"), were active in the Congo, Yemen, Iran, Nigeria, Benin, Chad and Angola, and several times in the Comoros, an island nation off the east coast Africa in the Indian Ocean.
According to Denard, there were enough adventures and money. But some also had a share of idealism. The mercenaries had their own code of ethics, their own code of honor. They have never committed terrorist acts, they have never killed innocent civilians. They had their own rules, but the laws of the country in which the mercenaries worked were also respected.
Fallback
Bob Denard claimed that many of his actions were carried out with the tacit consent of the French government. Nevertheless, he was tried three times in France on charges of illegal armed activities, most recently in July 2007, when he was sentenced to a year in prison for organizing a coup in the Comoros in 1995. At another court session, the question of whether thewhether he is serving this sentence, but Denard has already died.
During the process, which began in 2006, his friends in the government did not forget about him. “When the secret services are unable to carry out certain types of covert operations, they use parallel structures,” a former French foreign intelligence official told the court. “That fallback was Bob Denard.”
France did not betray him. In a 1993 interview, after other officials spoke out in his defence, he stated that the rules in the case were that no contracts were made. Therefore, if you are in a situation where everything turns against you, it is very helpful and very touching to have people of honor supporting you.
Short biography
Bob Denard was born in Bordeaux on April 7, 1929 under the name of Gilbert Bourgeaud in the family of a retired army officer who later worked in the French colonies, where his son grew up. As a teenager, Gilbert entered the Naval Academy and went to serve in the Navy. He was sent to Vietnam and then to Indochina, where France struggled to hold on to its colonial possessions. Realizing that he could not achieve career growth, Denard rebelled. He knew he deserved more.
Shortly before leaving the military, he was trained in the US, where he discovered a New World that is more modern, more equal and more prosperous. Through connections in the United States, Denard got a job as a security guard for an American firm in Morocco. In 1952, he joined the local French police.
In Casablanca he fell underthe influence of right-wing extremist groups and in 1956 was accused of participating in a conspiracy to assassinate French Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France. He spent 14 months in prison.
Guard in Katanga
After his release, Bob Denard returned to France, where for some time he worked as a seller of bathroom accessories, but he quickly got bored with this occupation. In 1961, a friend showed him an advertisement in the newspaper for the recruitment of employees to protect the mining enterprises in Katanga. A few weeks later he was already in the Congo, dressed in the uniform of a paratrooper. He soon led a motley group of soldiers of fortune from Europe and South Africa, participating in guerrilla warfare in the African bush. Here he established a reputation as a spectacular and fearless leader of mercenaries.
When the attempt to separate the province of Katanga from the Congo after the country gained independence from Belgium ended in failure, he fought in Yemen, where he allegedly worked in close cooperation with British intelligence, as Denard himself claimed.
Bob was wounded in battle and limped for the rest of his life. Shortly thereafter, he participated in the defeat of the Biafran War of Independence from Nigeria, and in the 1970s and early 1980s he worked in Benin, Chad and Angola (where he said he worked with the CIA).
Operation Shrimp: Bob Denard in Benin
On Sunday morning, January 16, 1977, he loaded 90 mercenaries armed with STEN submachine guns, recruited from newspaper advertisements, onto a DC-7 aircraft to seize power in a smallWest African state of Benin.
Denar's plan was simple. All he had to do was to neutralize President Kerek and his supporters by laying siege to the capital with a small group of soldiers. Later, order in the country was to be restored by troops from Togo.
They fought for 2 hours in the capital Cotonou, capturing the international airport and the presidential palace, where the dictator was not present. While the fighting was going on, he calmly left his house and went on the air, confirming that he was alive and calling on the citizens of Benin to resist "a monstrous act of imperialist aggression". As a result, Denard retreated, leaving dead fighters, weapons, equipment and, worst of all, documents detailing the entire plan to seize power. Those who retreated took with them only a resident of the capital, who responded to the call of the president and went out with weapons in his hands to defend the country's sovereignty, but surrendered, stumbling upon Denard's team. The “hostage” himself seemed to be happy to leave Benin and his wife.
Families of those killed in the attack filed lawsuits in the courts of France and Benin. At home, Denard was sentenced to 5 years in prison, and in the country where he failed, to death.
But he was already out of reach of both jurisdictions: a heavily armed Frenchman at the head of a mercenary army headed for a small island nation in the Indian Ocean.
Decisive attempt
In the Comoros, Denar has achieved the greatest success. In 1975, he already organized a coup d'état against President Ahmed here. Abdullah Abdereman.
This time, Bob couldn't afford to fail. More than a year he spent on the embodiment of this enterprise - the overthrow of President Sualikh. Twice planned air operations had to be canceled due to lack of external support. Denard no longer enjoyed the favor of his "sponsors". But he couldn't back down.
After Cotonou, many turned their backs on Denard, even his first lieutenant called the plan to transfer by sea from the coast of France to Moroni without intermediate stops in ports madness.
Ahmed Abdallah gave him a budget of 3 million francs. By the time the third operation was planned, half the amount had already been spent. Twice he hired a team, twice paid an advance, and then for the failure of the contract. Abdullah and the other two sponsors of the coup could no longer afford further expenses. Denard had only 2 options: either surrender or invest in the operation all his money earned over 18 years of service as a mercenary. He even had to mortgage his only legitimate business, an auto repair shop.
Messenger of Allah
The May 13, 1978 coup was perhaps Bob Denard's greatest gamble, because both the undertaking and the victory were his own. He acted alone.
In Lorient, where he purchased and prepared the deep-sea trawler Antinea, Denard spent more than one week personally checking everything down to the last hull rivet. He surrounded himself with reliable, experienced people, friends, several engineers and a crew who, even at sea, did not know about the finalship waypoint.
Denar became not just a winner, but also a liberator. The population of the islands, each village expressed its gratitude to him. The Muslim population accepted him as a messenger of Allah.
Mercenary King
Bob found a second calling here: he rebuilt the Comoros, reorganized the administration, the police, the courts, the economy. He thought he had finally found a second home here and a place where he could spend his last days.
Intending to settle here forever, Bob Denard married a local woman who became his sixth wife, with whom he had two children. He had at least six more children from other marriages. He also converted to Islam and took the name Said Mustafa Majoub.
Bob Denard - the king of mercenaries - created a logistics base in the Comoros for military operations in Mozambique and Angola, and also helped France bypass the embargo imposed on South Africa. But in 1989, Abdullah was killed under unclear circumstances, and Denard, with the help of French paratroopers, managed to escape to South Africa.
Revenge attempt
After three years in South Africa, he returned to Paris, where he received a suspended sentence for attempting to overthrow the government of Benin in 1977 and was acquitted on charges of organizing the assassination of Abdullah. Bob Denard, whose autobiography, The Corsair of the Republic, had already been written, was about to retire.
But in 1995 hereturned to the Comoros in a small group, but his attempt to seize power failed, and French troops were sent to the archipelago to restore order. It was the last act that Bob Denard did, a mercenary for which he was eventually forced to answer in court over a decade later. By then, he was too ill to attend court hearings and speak for himself.
