Bob Denard
Encyclopedia
Colonel Bob Denard born Gilbert Bourgeaud, was a French
soldier and mercenary
. He was known for having done various jobs in support of Françafrique
(a term referring to France's sphere of influence in its former colonies
) for Jacques Foccart
, in charge of French president Charles de Gaulle
's policy in Africa. Having fought in Algeria during the Algerian War, he then took part in the Katanga
secession in the 1960s and fought in many African countries including Congo
, Angola
, Zimbabwe
and Gabon
. Between 1975 and 1995, he participated in four coups in the Comoro Islands
. It is widely believed that his adventures had the implicit support of the French state, even after the 1981 election
of the French Socialist Party candidate, François Mitterrand
, despite moderate changes in France's policy in Africa. He was the father of eight children and had been married seven times (polygamously
), after converting to Islam
. He is considered as the inspiration for Frederick Forsyth
's novel The Dogs of War.
in Indochina
and in French Algeria
, Denard served as a colonial policeman in Morocco
from 1952 to 1957. In 1954, he was convicted of an assassination plot against Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France
, a left-wing member of the Radical-Socialist Party who was negotiating the end
of the Indochina War
and withdrawal of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, and served 14 months in jail. An adamant anti-Communist, Denard then took part in many anti-colonialist struggles, simultaneously on his own behalf and on the behalf of the French state. Once he was freed from jail, he worked for the French secret services during the war in Algeria.
After his discharge from the French navy, Bob Denard was briefly a policeman in Morocco and a demonstrator for washing machines in Paris.
He began his mercenary career, which was to span three decades, in Katanga
, probably in December 1961 when he and other foreign mercenaries were brought in by the leader of the mercenaries in Katanga, Roger Faulques. He became famous after rescuing white civilians encircled by rebels in Stanleyville (The 1978 film The Wild Geese
is based on these events). Denard fought there until the secessionist movement led by Moise Tshombe
collapsed in January 1963. Then, Denard and his men fled to Portuguese-controlled Angola
.
Denard is known to have participated in conflicts in Zimbabwe
, Yemen
, Iran
, Nigeria
, Benin
, Gabon
, Angola
, Zaire
and the Comoros
, the last-named nation having been subject to more than twenty coups d'état in the past decades. For most of his career Denard had the quiet backing of France
and the French secret service which wished to maintain French influence over its ex-colonies.
In mid-1963 he made his way to North Yemen
, which was then in the middle of a civil war
between a Nasserist government and royalist tribesmen. The royalists were supported by the Western Europeans and Saudi Arabia
. The French and British sponsored a number of mercenaries to train the royalist volunteers in military techniques, and Bob Denard was among those who joined the Imam al-Badr
, leader of the royalists.
After about eighteen months Denard returned to the Congo
to take employment under Moise Tshombe who was now the prime minister of the central government in Leopoldville
. Denard served for two years in the Congo battling rebel supporters of the late Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba
, who had been murdered in Katanga in 1961 after having been overthrown by rival politicians and severely tortured while in transit. The rebels were backed by the Chinese
and Cuba
ns, including Che Guevara
while Lumumba's murderers were tacitly backed by the CIA and Belgium. Denard was in charge of his own unit of French mercenaries called les affreux (lit. : the awfuls). Denard helped put down an attempted coup on behalf of Tshombe by Katangan separatists in July 1966. Tshombe had been overthrown while abroad by Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko
, the leader of the army, in November 1965.
A year later Denard sided with Katangan separatists and Belgian mercenaries led by Jean Schramme
in a revolt in eastern Congo. The rebels soon found themselves bottled up in Bukavu
. Denard was wounded in the initial rising and flew out with a group of more seriously wounded men to Rhodesia
. In January 1968 he invaded Katanga with a force of a hundred men on bicycles in an attempt to create a diversion for a breakout from Bukavu. The invasion was a farce.
Denard missed out on mercenary activity in Biafra
during the Nigerian civil war during the late 1960s. From 1968 to 1978 he was employed supporting the government in Gabon and was available to carry out military actions on behalf of the French government in Africa. He may have been involved in a raid against Guinea in 1970. He was involved in a failed coup attempt in Benin
(Opération Crevette, or Operation Shrimp), against Mathieu Kérékou
, the leader of the People's Revolutionary Party of Benin
, in 1977. Although Jacques Foccart denied personal knowledge of the attempted coup after its failure, he did recognize that it had been backed-up by Gnassingbé Eyadéma
(Togo), Houphouet-Boigny
(Ivory Coast), Omar Bongo
(Gabon) and Hassan II (Morocco), all allies of France.
. He attempted to overthrow the government of this small island group four times. On orders from Jacques Foccart
, he ousted the first president, Ahmed Abdallah
, who had just unilaterally proclaimed the Comoros' independence on July 6, 1975. Ahmed Abdallah was replaced by Ali Soilih
.
He then failed at a coup in Benin
in 1977 and carried out some operations in Rhodesia in 1977. He returned to the Comoros with 43 men, where he successfully carried out a coup against president Ali Soilih
, who had turned toward socialist policies and was killed under mysterious circumstances on May 29, 1978. Helped by Denard, Ahmed Abdallah took the presidency back. For eleven years (1978-1989) Denard headed Abdallah's 500-strong presidential guard and had strong influence and business interests in the archipelago, marrying and converting to Islam
and eventually becoming a citizen of the country. He adopted the Islamic name Said Mustapha Mahdjoub upon his conversion.
The Comoros also served as his logistic base for military operations in Mozambique
and Angola. He was then supported by Paris, as the Comoros provided France for a base to get around the embargo
against the apartheid regime of South Africa
. Denard built an empire in the Comoros, composed of hotels, lands, and the presidential guard. According to Xavier Renou, author of a book on private military contractors, Denard foreshadowed the transition between traditional mercenaries to contemporary private military contractors, creating a small army during his stay in the Comoros in the 1980s.
In 1989, fearing a probable coup d'état, president Ahmed Abdallah signed a decree
ordering the Presidential Guard, led by Bob Denard, to disarm the armed forces. Shortly after the signing of the decree, a military officer allegedly entered president Abdallah's office and shot him, injuring Denard at the same time. A few days later, Bob Denard was evacuated to South Africa
by French paratroopers.
region, in France, for his trial for the murder of president Ahmed Abdallah
in 1989. With his lieutenant Dominique Malacrino, he had to face charges in May 1999 for his role in the 1989 coup, in which, according to the French prosecution, president Ahmed Abdallah was killed on the orders of Denard because he was about to remove Denard as head of the presidential guard. The prosecution said Ahmed Abdallah was shot on orders from Denard during a faked attack on his palace on the night of November 26, 1989. But a few days before the trial, Abdallah's family dropped their suit, and finally Bob Denard and Dominique Malacrino were acquitted because of lack of evidence. The Comoros experienced its twentieth coup attempt since independence on the day that the trial began.
Afterward, president Mohamed Taki Abdulkarim declared that he refused Bob Denard's return to the Comoros. On November 6, 1998, Abdulkarim died under suspicious circumstances. His family suspected a poisoning and asked for an autopsy. The post-mortem examination was refused and Abdulkarim was said to have died of natural causes.
in an attempted coup against president Said Mohamed Djohar
, Abdallah’s successor. On October 4, in accordance with an agreement between France and the Comoros, the French army put an end to the attempt. Bob Denard was brought back to France by the French DGSE
intelligence agency for trial.
, against Saïd Djohar, in the Comoros. The French government sent an expeditionary force to capture Denard and his 33 mercenaries. Despite having over 300 armed Comorians ready to fight and having machine gun posts set up, Denard surrendered without a shot being fired and spent ten months in a Paris jail. At his trial a number of former Gaullist politicians, including Charles Pasqua
, spoke on his behalf.
In 2001, Guido Papalia, Italian attorney of Verona
, prosecuted Denard for having tried to recruit mercenaries in the far-right Italian movement (through Franco Nerozzi) in order to make a coup against Colonel Azali Assoumani
, the current president, also opposed to his return to the Comoros.
On March 9, 2006, attorney Olivier Bray asked for five years of prison for the 1995 coup d'État against Said Mohamed Djohar under the code-name "Eskazi", and sentences between one and four years for his 26 accomplices. During the three-week-long trial, Bob Denard and his accomplices tried to convince the court that they had acted with implicit support of French authorities. Dominique Malacrino talked about the "numerous phone calls of Jacques Foccart
, then responsible for the African office at the Elysée palace
" to Bob Denard. Emmanuel Pochet, another suspect, declared that Denard had "support from senior officers of the special forces of the DGSE", the French external intelligence agency. Olivier Feneteau, another suspect, declared that he had belonged in the past to the "action service" of the DGSE. On March 9, Denard's lawyer presented declarations by former president Djohar, who had stated, during an interview to Comorian newspaper Kashkazi at the end of October 2005, that his security chief, Captain Rubis, a French officer that the French authorities had recommended to him, "was aware of the coup".
In June 2006 Denard, who by then was suffering from Alzheimer's, was found guilty of "belonging to a gang who conspired to commit a crime", and was given a five-year suspended jail term. During the trial, the role of the French secret services in the 1995 coup against Saïd Djohar was recognized, but not deemed sufficient to discharge the mercenaries of their guilt. However, the knowledge of the French authorities of the attempted coup was one of the reasons given by the Court to abstain from ordering a firm prison sentence. During his trial in 2006 before the Court of Appeal, a former head of the foreign intelligence service explicitly stated that "When special services are unable to undertake certain kinds of undercover operation, they use parallel structures. This was the case of Bob Denard." In July 2007, he was sentenced by the Court of Appeal to four years of prison (one firm, three suspended). However, he never served his sentence for health reasons.
His death was announced by his sister on October 14, 2007.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
soldier and mercenary
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
. He was known for having done various jobs in support of Françafrique
Françafrique
Françafrique is a term that refers to France's relationship with Africa. The term was first used in a positive sense by President Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire, but it is now generally understood to denounce the neocolonial relationship France has with its African backyard...
(a term referring to France's sphere of influence in its former colonies
French colonial empire
The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
) for Jacques Foccart
Jacques Foccart
Jacques Foccart was a chief adviser for the government of France on African policy as well as the co-founder of the Gaullist Service d'Action Civique in 1959 with Charles Pasqua, which specialized in covert operations in Africa.From 1960 to 1974, he was the President of France's chief of staff...
, in charge of French president Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
's policy in Africa. Having fought in Algeria during the Algerian War, he then took part in the Katanga
State of Katanga
Katanga was a breakaway state proclaimed on 11 July 1960 separating itself from the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo. In revolt against the new government of Patrice Lumumba in July, Katanga declared independence under Moise Tshombe, leader of the local CONAKAT party...
secession in the 1960s and fought in many African countries including Congo
Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville)
The Republic of the Congo was an independent republic established following the independence granted to the former colony of the Belgian Congo in 1960...
, Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
and Gabon
Gabon
Gabon , officially the Gabonese Republic is a state in west central Africa sharing borders with Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, and with the Republic of the Congo curving around the east and south. The Gulf of Guinea, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean is to the west...
. Between 1975 and 1995, he participated in four coups in the Comoro Islands
Comoro Islands
The Comoros Islands form an archipelago of volcanic islands situated off the south-east coast of Africa, to the east of Mozambique and north-west of Madagascar. They are divided between the sovereign state of Comoros and the French overseas department of Mayotte...
. It is widely believed that his adventures had the implicit support of the French state, even after the 1981 election
French presidential election, 1981
The French presidential election of 1981 took place on 10 May 1981, giving the presidency of France to François Mitterrand, the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic....
of the French Socialist Party candidate, François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
, despite moderate changes in France's policy in Africa. He was the father of eight children and had been married seven times (polygamously
Polygamy
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...
), after converting to Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. He is considered as the inspiration for Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
's novel The Dogs of War.
History
After having served with the French NavyFrench Navy
The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...
in Indochina
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946, until August 1, 1954, between the French Union's French Far East...
and in French Algeria
French Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
, Denard served as a colonial policeman in Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
from 1952 to 1957. In 1954, he was convicted of an assassination plot against Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France
Pierre Mendès-France
Pierre Mendès France was a French politician. He descended from a Portuguese Jewish family that moved to France in the sixteenth century.-Third Republic and World War II:...
, a left-wing member of the Radical-Socialist Party who was negotiating the end
Geneva Conference (1954)
The Geneva Conference was a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to unify Korea and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina...
of the Indochina War
First Indochina War
The First Indochina War was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946, until August 1, 1954, between the French Union's French Far East...
and withdrawal of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, and served 14 months in jail. An adamant anti-Communist, Denard then took part in many anti-colonialist struggles, simultaneously on his own behalf and on the behalf of the French state. Once he was freed from jail, he worked for the French secret services during the war in Algeria.
After his discharge from the French navy, Bob Denard was briefly a policeman in Morocco and a demonstrator for washing machines in Paris.
He began his mercenary career, which was to span three decades, in Katanga
State of Katanga
Katanga was a breakaway state proclaimed on 11 July 1960 separating itself from the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo. In revolt against the new government of Patrice Lumumba in July, Katanga declared independence under Moise Tshombe, leader of the local CONAKAT party...
, probably in December 1961 when he and other foreign mercenaries were brought in by the leader of the mercenaries in Katanga, Roger Faulques. He became famous after rescuing white civilians encircled by rebels in Stanleyville (The 1978 film The Wild Geese
The Wild Geese
The Wild Geese is a British 1978 film about a group of mercenaries in Africa. It stars Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and Hardy Krüger...
is based on these events). Denard fought there until the secessionist movement led by Moise Tshombe
Moise Tshombe
Moïse Kapenda Tshombe was a Congolese politician.- Biography :He was the son of a successful Congolese businessman and was born in Musumba, Congo. He received his education from an American missionary school and later trained as an accountant...
collapsed in January 1963. Then, Denard and his men fled to Portuguese-controlled Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
.
Denard is known to have participated in conflicts in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
, Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
, Gabon
Gabon
Gabon , officially the Gabonese Republic is a state in west central Africa sharing borders with Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, and with the Republic of the Congo curving around the east and south. The Gulf of Guinea, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean is to the west...
, Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
, Zaire
Zaire
The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...
and the Comoros
Comoros
The Comoros , officially the Union of the Comoros is an archipelago island nation in the Indian Ocean, located off the eastern coast of Africa, on the northern end of the Mozambique Channel, between northeastern Mozambique and northwestern Madagascar...
, the last-named nation having been subject to more than twenty coups d'état in the past decades. For most of his career Denard had the quiet backing of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and the French secret service which wished to maintain French influence over its ex-colonies.
In mid-1963 he made his way to North Yemen
North Yemen
North Yemen is a term currently used to designate the Yemen Arab Republic , its predecessor, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen , and their predecessors that exercised sovereignty over the territory that is now the north-western part of the state of Yemen in southern Arabia.Neither state ever...
, which was then in the middle of a civil war
North Yemen Civil War
The North Yemen Civil War was fought in North Yemen between royalists of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen and factions of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1962 to 1970. The war began with a coup d'état carried out by the republican leader, Abdullah as-Sallal, which dethroned the newly crowned Imam...
between a Nasserist government and royalist tribesmen. The royalists were supported by the Western Europeans and Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
. The French and British sponsored a number of mercenaries to train the royalist volunteers in military techniques, and Bob Denard was among those who joined the Imam al-Badr
Muhammad al-Badr
H.M. Muhammad Al-Badr was the last king of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen and leader of the monarchist regions during the North Yemen Civil War...
, leader of the royalists.
After about eighteen months Denard returned to the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
to take employment under Moise Tshombe who was now the prime minister of the central government in Leopoldville
Kinshasa
Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The city is located on the Congo River....
. Denard served for two years in the Congo battling rebel supporters of the late Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Émery Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only ten weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis...
, who had been murdered in Katanga in 1961 after having been overthrown by rival politicians and severely tortured while in transit. The rebels were backed by the Chinese
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
and Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
ns, including Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
while Lumumba's murderers were tacitly backed by the CIA and Belgium. Denard was in charge of his own unit of French mercenaries called les affreux (lit. : the awfuls). Denard helped put down an attempted coup on behalf of Tshombe by Katangan separatists in July 1966. Tshombe had been overthrown while abroad by Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga , commonly known as Mobutu or Mobutu Sese Seko , born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, was the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997...
, the leader of the army, in November 1965.
A year later Denard sided with Katangan separatists and Belgian mercenaries led by Jean Schramme
Jean Schramme
Jean Schramme was a Belgian mercenary and farmer, owner of an estate of about 15 square kilometres, and boss of about 1000 indigenous workers....
in a revolt in eastern Congo. The rebels soon found themselves bottled up in Bukavu
Bukavu
Bukavu is a city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo , lying at the extreme south-eastern extent of Lake Kivu, west of Cyangugu in Rwanda, and separated from it by the outlet of the Ruzizi River. It is the capital of the Sud-Kivu province and as of 2009 it had an estimated population of...
. Denard was wounded in the initial rising and flew out with a group of more seriously wounded men to Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...
. In January 1968 he invaded Katanga with a force of a hundred men on bicycles in an attempt to create a diversion for a breakout from Bukavu. The invasion was a farce.
Denard missed out on mercenary activity in Biafra
Biafra
Biafra, officially the Republic of Biafra, was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria that existed from 30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970, taking its name from the Bight of Biafra . The inhabitants were mostly the Igbo people who led the secession due to economic, ethnic, cultural and religious...
during the Nigerian civil war during the late 1960s. From 1968 to 1978 he was employed supporting the government in Gabon and was available to carry out military actions on behalf of the French government in Africa. He may have been involved in a raid against Guinea in 1970. He was involved in a failed coup attempt in Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
(Opération Crevette, or Operation Shrimp), against Mathieu Kérékou
Mathieu Kérékou
Mathieu Kérékou, was President of Benin from 1972 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2006. After seizing power in a military coup, he ruled the country for 17 years, for most of that time under an officially Marxist-Leninist ideology, before he was stripped of his powers by the National Conference of...
, the leader of the People's Revolutionary Party of Benin
People's Revolutionary Party of Benin
The People's Revolutionary Party of Benin was a political party in the People's Republic of Benin. It was founded in 1975 by General Mathieu Kérékou. With the new constitution of November 30, 1975, PRPB became the sole legal party in the country...
, in 1977. Although Jacques Foccart denied personal knowledge of the attempted coup after its failure, he did recognize that it had been backed-up by Gnassingbé Eyadéma
Gnassingbé Eyadéma
General Gnassingbé Eyadéma , was the President of Togo from 1967 until his death in 2005. He participated in two successful military coups, in January 1963 and January 1967, and became President on April 14, 1967...
(Togo), Houphouet-Boigny
Houphouët-Boigny
Félix Houphouët-Boigny was the first President of Côte d'Ivoire.Houphouët-Boigny may also refer to:* Marie-Thérèse Houphouët-Boigny, former First Lady of Côte d'Ivoire; current philanthropist...
(Ivory Coast), Omar Bongo
Omar Bongo
El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba , born as Albert-Bernard Bongo, was a Gabonese politician who was President of Gabon for 42 years from 1967 until his death in office in 2009....
(Gabon) and Hassan II (Morocco), all allies of France.
The Comoros
His "favorite" targets were the ComorosComoros
The Comoros , officially the Union of the Comoros is an archipelago island nation in the Indian Ocean, located off the eastern coast of Africa, on the northern end of the Mozambique Channel, between northeastern Mozambique and northwestern Madagascar...
. He attempted to overthrow the government of this small island group four times. On orders from Jacques Foccart
Jacques Foccart
Jacques Foccart was a chief adviser for the government of France on African policy as well as the co-founder of the Gaullist Service d'Action Civique in 1959 with Charles Pasqua, which specialized in covert operations in Africa.From 1960 to 1974, he was the President of France's chief of staff...
, he ousted the first president, Ahmed Abdallah
Ahmed Abdallah
Ahmed Abdallah Abderemane was a Comorian politician. He was President of the Comoros from 25 October 1978 until his death.-Life prior to the presidency:...
, who had just unilaterally proclaimed the Comoros' independence on July 6, 1975. Ahmed Abdallah was replaced by Ali Soilih
Ali Soilih
Ali Soilih, full name Ali Soilih Mtsashiwa, was a Comorian socialist revolutionary and political figure.-Biography:...
.
He then failed at a coup in Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
in 1977 and carried out some operations in Rhodesia in 1977. He returned to the Comoros with 43 men, where he successfully carried out a coup against president Ali Soilih
Ali Soilih
Ali Soilih, full name Ali Soilih Mtsashiwa, was a Comorian socialist revolutionary and political figure.-Biography:...
, who had turned toward socialist policies and was killed under mysterious circumstances on May 29, 1978. Helped by Denard, Ahmed Abdallah took the presidency back. For eleven years (1978-1989) Denard headed Abdallah's 500-strong presidential guard and had strong influence and business interests in the archipelago, marrying and converting to Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and eventually becoming a citizen of the country. He adopted the Islamic name Said Mustapha Mahdjoub upon his conversion.
The Comoros also served as his logistic base for military operations in Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
and Angola. He was then supported by Paris, as the Comoros provided France for a base to get around the embargo
Embargo
An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce and trade with a particular country, in order to isolate it. Embargoes are considered strong diplomatic measures imposed in an effort, by the imposing country, to elicit a given national-interest result from the country on which it is...
against the apartheid regime of South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
. Denard built an empire in the Comoros, composed of hotels, lands, and the presidential guard. According to Xavier Renou, author of a book on private military contractors, Denard foreshadowed the transition between traditional mercenaries to contemporary private military contractors, creating a small army during his stay in the Comoros in the 1980s.
In 1989, fearing a probable coup d'état, president Ahmed Abdallah signed a decree
Decree
A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures . It has the force of law...
ordering the Presidential Guard, led by Bob Denard, to disarm the armed forces. Shortly after the signing of the decree, a military officer allegedly entered president Abdallah's office and shot him, injuring Denard at the same time. A few days later, Bob Denard was evacuated to South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
by French paratroopers.
Trial concerning the 1989 coup against Ahmed Abdallah
Bob Denard then waited in the MédocMédoc
The Médoc is a region of France, well known as a wine growing region, located in the département of Gironde, on the left bank of the Gironde estuary, north of Bordeaux. Its name comes from Medullicus, or "country of the Medulli", the local Celtic tribe...
region, in France, for his trial for the murder of president Ahmed Abdallah
Ahmed Abdallah
Ahmed Abdallah Abderemane was a Comorian politician. He was President of the Comoros from 25 October 1978 until his death.-Life prior to the presidency:...
in 1989. With his lieutenant Dominique Malacrino, he had to face charges in May 1999 for his role in the 1989 coup, in which, according to the French prosecution, president Ahmed Abdallah was killed on the orders of Denard because he was about to remove Denard as head of the presidential guard. The prosecution said Ahmed Abdallah was shot on orders from Denard during a faked attack on his palace on the night of November 26, 1989. But a few days before the trial, Abdallah's family dropped their suit, and finally Bob Denard and Dominique Malacrino were acquitted because of lack of evidence. The Comoros experienced its twentieth coup attempt since independence on the day that the trial began.
Afterward, president Mohamed Taki Abdulkarim declared that he refused Bob Denard's return to the Comoros. On November 6, 1998, Abdulkarim died under suspicious circumstances. His family suspected a poisoning and asked for an autopsy. The post-mortem examination was refused and Abdulkarim was said to have died of natural causes.
1995 coup against Said Mohamed Djohar
On the night of September 27, 1995, Bob Denard landed on the Comoros with 30 men in Zodiac inflatable boatsZodiac Group
Zodiac, which became Zodiac Aerospace in 2007, is a French corporation, specialized in the production and development of on-board systems, safety systems and cabin interiors...
in an attempted coup against president Said Mohamed Djohar
Said Mohamed Djohar
Said Mohammed Djohar was a Comorian politician who served as President of the Comoros during the 1990s.-Climb to power:...
, Abdallah’s successor. On October 4, in accordance with an agreement between France and the Comoros, the French army put an end to the attempt. Bob Denard was brought back to France by the French DGSE
Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure
The General Directorate for External Security is France's external intelligence agency. Operating under the direction of the French ministry of defence, the agency works alongside the DCRI in providing intelligence and national security, notably by performing paramilitary and counterintelligence...
intelligence agency for trial.
Trial concerning the 1995 coup against Said Djohar
Denard was arrested in 1995 when he launched a fourth coup, Operation KaskariOperation Azalee
Operation Azalee was the name of an expedition to remove the provisional government of the Comoros that was led and put into power by famed mercenary Bob Denard.- Denard coup :...
, against Saïd Djohar, in the Comoros. The French government sent an expeditionary force to capture Denard and his 33 mercenaries. Despite having over 300 armed Comorians ready to fight and having machine gun posts set up, Denard surrendered without a shot being fired and spent ten months in a Paris jail. At his trial a number of former Gaullist politicians, including Charles Pasqua
Charles Pasqua
Charles Pasqua is a French businessman and Gaullist politician. He was Interior Minister from 1986 to 1988, under Jacques Chirac's cohabitation government, and also from 1993 to 1995, under the government of Edouard Balladur...
, spoke on his behalf.
In 2001, Guido Papalia, Italian attorney of Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
, prosecuted Denard for having tried to recruit mercenaries in the far-right Italian movement (through Franco Nerozzi) in order to make a coup against Colonel Azali Assoumani
Azali Assoumani
Azali Assoumani was a president of the Comoros. He became leader of the country on 30 April 1999 after leading a coup to depose acting president Tadjidine Ben Said Massounde, who he saw as pandering to the independence movement on Anjouan...
, the current president, also opposed to his return to the Comoros.
On March 9, 2006, attorney Olivier Bray asked for five years of prison for the 1995 coup d'État against Said Mohamed Djohar under the code-name "Eskazi", and sentences between one and four years for his 26 accomplices. During the three-week-long trial, Bob Denard and his accomplices tried to convince the court that they had acted with implicit support of French authorities. Dominique Malacrino talked about the "numerous phone calls of Jacques Foccart
Jacques Foccart
Jacques Foccart was a chief adviser for the government of France on African policy as well as the co-founder of the Gaullist Service d'Action Civique in 1959 with Charles Pasqua, which specialized in covert operations in Africa.From 1960 to 1974, he was the President of France's chief of staff...
, then responsible for the African office at the Elysée palace
Élysée Palace
The Élysée Palace is the official residence of the President of the French Republic, containing his office, and is where the Council of Ministers meets. It is located near the Champs-Élysées in Paris....
" to Bob Denard. Emmanuel Pochet, another suspect, declared that Denard had "support from senior officers of the special forces of the DGSE", the French external intelligence agency. Olivier Feneteau, another suspect, declared that he had belonged in the past to the "action service" of the DGSE. On March 9, Denard's lawyer presented declarations by former president Djohar, who had stated, during an interview to Comorian newspaper Kashkazi at the end of October 2005, that his security chief, Captain Rubis, a French officer that the French authorities had recommended to him, "was aware of the coup".
In June 2006 Denard, who by then was suffering from Alzheimer's, was found guilty of "belonging to a gang who conspired to commit a crime", and was given a five-year suspended jail term. During the trial, the role of the French secret services in the 1995 coup against Saïd Djohar was recognized, but not deemed sufficient to discharge the mercenaries of their guilt. However, the knowledge of the French authorities of the attempted coup was one of the reasons given by the Court to abstain from ordering a firm prison sentence. During his trial in 2006 before the Court of Appeal, a former head of the foreign intelligence service explicitly stated that "When special services are unable to undertake certain kinds of undercover operation, they use parallel structures. This was the case of Bob Denard." In July 2007, he was sentenced by the Court of Appeal to four years of prison (one firm, three suspended). However, he never served his sentence for health reasons.
His death was announced by his sister on October 14, 2007.