© Suhaib Salem / ReutersSuspected African mercenaries held by anti-government protesters stand in a room at a courthouse in Benghazi on Friday February 25.
An Israeli company is recruiting mercenaries to support Moammar Gadhafi's efforts to suppress an uprising against his regime, an Israeli news site
said Tuesday.
Citing Egyptian sources, the Hebrew-language news site Inyan Merkazi said the company was run by retired Israeli army commanders.
The report claims that many high-profile former Israeli officers have been illegally trading weapons in several African nations, and have faced interrogations over their activities in the past.
The news site said the head of the company recently met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli intelligence chief Aviv Cokhavi. It added that the officials all approved the company's recruitment of mercenaries to help Gadhafi.
The leader's brutal crackdown has killed at least 1,000 Libyans so far, human rights groups say.
According to the report, Israeli officials approved the recruitment out of fears that if toppled, Gadhafi would be replaced by an "extremist Islamic regime."
During Gadhafi's four-decade rule of the north African state, he has been one of Israel's most vocal critics.
Company representatives recently flew to Chad to discuss the matter with a high-ranking Libyan intelligence officer Abduallah Sanusi, the report said. During the meeting, Sanusi agreed to pay the company to recruit up to 50,000 mercenaries from African countries, according to the news site.
Comment: Here's a translation from Avi, a regular commenter at
mondoweiss.net, of the source article at
Hebrew-language news site Inyan Merkazi:
The article states that the weapons were provided by an Israeli company that's made up of former generals in the Israeli army.
The article states that in the past, the company was under investigation for illegal sales to another African country, but this time, according to Egyptian sources, the company received explicit approval when the company's CEO whose name was specifically mentioned in the document (there's no link to that document within the body of the article) had met with the head of Aman (Hebrew acronym for Intelligence Directorate) Aviv Kokhavi and later with the Minister of Defense Barak and PM Netanyahu. That CEO, the article explains, had received the approval of the aforementioned officials to go ahead and recruit mercenaries as Israel fears the establishment of a Muslim Caliphate in Qaddafi's place.
It adds that the Libyan ruler seeks to establish an army of 50,000 mercenaries who will arrive from different areas in order to break apart the anti-government rebellion.
[Avi - Up until now I was paraphrasing the translation, but the article contains too many details. So, I'll resume verbatim:]
It is further reported that representatives of the Israeli company that deals in arms sales and serves as a broker for fighters had met with Libya's intelligence chief, Abdallah Sannusi. The meeting took place in Chad, another African state. The final details of the deal were agreed upon in that meeting. Chad, Libya's and Sudan's neighbor to the south has had intimate relations with Israel for several decades now.
It should be noted that mercenaries who had already arrived in Tripoli, left from Chad and that is a provable fact. According to publications in the west, Qaddafi pays the company that deals in recruiting mercenaries 2,000 USD per day, per fighter. From that, the mercenaries personally receive about $100 per day. This is a brokerage deal to the tune of billions of dollars. The money is paid to the African supervisors who bring their gangs and rake in a fortune. The large amounts include weapons and ammunition that mercenaries use, and compensation for the mercenaries' families in the event that fighters are killed, injured, or fall in captivity.
Simultaneously, it should be noted that the United States, Britain and perhaps NATO have decided to begin an aerial siege [no-fly zone] on Libya, also in order to prevent entry of mercenaries to the state.
The rebels in Libya have already succeeded in capturing a few tens of mercenaries and display them to the media. Qadhaffi himself denies having recruited fighters outside the country and said that more than half the subjects of Libya are "blacks, therefore the media errs for mistaking them for mercenaries".
50,000 fighters times USD 2,000/day equal 100 million per day.