PROJECT OPUS – Erik Prince and the Failed Plot to Arm a CIA Asset-Turned-Warlord in Libya

IN 2019, Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater and a prominent Donald Trump supporter, aided a plot to move U.S.-made attack helicopters, weapons, and other military equipment from Jordan to a renegade commander fighting for control of war-torn Libya. A team of mercenaries planned to use the aircraft to help the commander, Khalifa Hifter, a U.S. citizen and former CIA asset, defeat Libya’s U.N.-recognized and U.S.-backed government. While the U.N. has alleged that Prince helped facilitate the mercenary effort, sources with knowledge of the chain of events, as well as documents obtained by The Intercept, reveal new details about the scheme as well as Prince’s yearslong campaign to support Hifter in his bid to take power in Libya. The mission to back Hifter ultimately failed, but a confidential U.N. report issued last week and first reported by the New York Times concluded that Prince, a former Navy SEAL, and his associates violated the U.N. arms embargo for Libya. For more than a year, The Intercept has been investigating the failed mercenary effort, dubbed Project Opus. This account is based on dozens of interviews, including with people involved in the ill-fated mission, as well as the U.N. report and other documents obtained exclusively by The Intercept. It includes a blow-by-blow account of how Prince and an associate sought to pressure the Jordanian government to aid the illicit mission, as well as previously unreported details about how the architects of Project Opus used Prince’s connections to the Trump administration to try to win support for their efforts in Libya. The Intercept’s reporting shows that the push to aid Hifter continued even after Project Opus fell apart. In the summer of 2019, after their backdoor efforts failed to convince Jordan to approve the arms transfer, Prince called a member of Trump’s National Security Council to request a meeting; Prince asked the official to meet with Christiaan Durrant, Prince’s business associate and former employee. At the Army and Navy Club near the White House, with Prince sitting silently at his side, Durrant described the campaign to back Hifter and asked for U.S. support for their mercenary effort, the former NSC official told The Intercept. The upside, Durrant told the official, was that the U.S. help would limit Hifter’s reliance on the Russians, who were also supporting him in the war. The official, who asked not to be named because he feared professional reprisals for being publicly associated with Prince, balked. “It wasn’t something I wanted to be involved in,” he said.

via intercept: PROJECT OPUS – Erik Prince and the Failed Plot to Arm a CIA Asset-Turned-Warlord in Libya

siehe auch: ‘Project Opus’: UN Details Violations by Blackwater Founder Erik Prince in Libya. Independent UN sanctions monitors accused Prince of proposing a private military operation – known as ‘Project Opus’ – to Libya’s eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar. Erik Prince, the private security executive and supporter of former U.S. President Donald Trump, “at the very least” helped evade an arms embargo on Libya, according to excerpts from a United Nations report seen by Reuters. Independent UN sanctions monitors accused Prince of proposing a private military operation – known as ‘Project Opus’ – to Libya’s eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar in April 2019 and helping procure three aircraft for it. (…) The UN monitors wrote in the report that they had “identified that Erik Prince made a proposal for the operation to Khalifa Haftar in Cairo, Egypt on, or about, 14 April 2019.” Haftar was in Cairo at the time to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. “Mr. Prince was not in Egypt at any point in 2019 – as travel records confirm – and has never met or spoken to Mr. Haftar. This alleged meeting is fiction and never took place,” Schwartz said. The report described Prince’s proposal as “a well-funded private military company operation” designed to provide Haftar with armed assault helicopters, intelligence surveillance aircraft, maritime interdiction, drones, and cyber, intelligence and targeting capabilities; Trump-Unterstützer soll Hintermann von Söldner-Mission in Libyen sein. Tripolis im vergangenen Jahr: Ein Mann mit einem Gewehr geht an einem zerstörten Haus in einem verlassenen Vorort vorbei. Seit Jahren tobte in dem Land ein Bürgerkrieg. Mitten in der hitzigsten Phase des Bürgerkriegs erhielt Warlord Haftar Kriegsflugzeuge. Strippenzieher soll einem UN-Bericht zufolge der Gründer der US-Militärfirma Blackwater gewesen sein. Ein bekannter Trump-Unterstützer und Gründer der US-Militärfirma Blackwater ist nach Angaben eines vertraulichen UN-Berichts einer der Hauptbeteiligten bei einer geheimen Söldner-Operation in Libyen gewesen. Erik Prince habe dem libyschen Warlord Chalifa Haftar einem Expertengremium der Vereinten Nationen zufolge im April 2019 in Kairo eine Militär-Operation vorgeschlagen, die dem General in seinem Kampf gegen die international anerkannte Regierung des Landes helfen sollte. Die New York Times und die Deutsche Presse-Agentur zitieren in übereinstimmenden Berichten aus dem UN-Dokument. Demnach habe diese sogenannte “Operation Opus” Haftar bei seinem Marsch auf die Regierung in Tripolis mit bewaffneten Flugzeugen, Aufklärungsflügen, Booten sowie mit einem Programm zur Entführung und Tötung von hochrangigen feindlichen Personen unterstützen sollen. Prince habe in der Folge Kriegsflugzeuge nach Libyen gebracht und damit gegen das Waffenembargo für das Bürgerkriegsland verstoßen.

Von Alexei Shevelev – <a rel=”nofollow” class=”external free” href=”http://spotters.net.ua/file/?id=31402&amp;size=large”>http://spotters.net.ua/file/?id=31402&amp;size=large</a>, GFDL, Link