Bob Denard (photo further in the article) - the legendary French soldier of fortune, who for decades participated in coups and engaged in mercenaries throughout Africa and the Middle East, died on October 13, 2007, at the age of 78.
Death was announced by his sister, Georgette Garnier. The reason was not reported, but it is known that the "king of mercenaries" for several years suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
Communist fighter
The tall, elegant man who inspired Frederick Forsyth to write the Dogs of War, a European soldier of fortune in Africa, Dogs of War, Bob Denard, a military man, never felt the need to apologize for his actions, claiming in an interview that he was a Western soldier involved in the fight against communism.
“It's true, I was not a saint, ” he said in 1993. - In battle, you can’t do otherwise. But I would still not be here if I were to do really reprehensible things. ”
King permission
Instead of talking about himself as a mercenary or a pirate, he preferred to be called a corsair. “Corsairs in France received written permission from the king to attack foreign ships, ” he explained. “I didn’t have such permission, but I had passports issued by the special services.”
Thus, since the early 1960s, he could not refuse to participate either in support or in the overthrow of governments in former European colonies and other conflict zones. Apparently, he had no problems finding recruits in the underground world of soldiers of fortune.
He and his followers, who boasted of their nickname les Affreux (“Horrible”), acted in the Congo, Yemen, Iran, Nigeria, Benin, Chad, and Angola, and several times in the Comoros, an island nation off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean.
According to Denard, there was enough adventure and money. But some had a share of idealism. The mercenaries had their own code of ethics, their own code of honor. They never committed terrorist acts, never killed innocent civilians. They had their own rules, but the laws of the country in which the mercenaries worked were also respected.
"Spare option"
Bob Denard claimed that many of his actions were committed with the tacit consent of the French government. Nevertheless, he was tried three times in France on charges of illegal armed actions, most recently in July 2007, when he was sentenced to a year in prison for organizing a coup in Comoros in 1995. At another court hearing, the question was to be decided whether he was able to serve this sentence, but Denard had already died.
At a process that began back in 2006, friends in the government did not forget about him. “When special services are unable to carry out certain types of covert operations, they use parallel structures, ” a former French foreign intelligence official said in court. “Bob Denard was such a fallback.”
France did not betray him. In a 1993 interview, after other officials spoke out in his defense, he stated that the rules in this matter were such that no contracts were made. Therefore, if you are in a situation where everything turns against you, it is very useful and very touching when there are people of honor supporting you.
short biography
Bob Denard was born in Bordeaux on April 7, 1929 under the name of Gilbert Bourgeau 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 school and went to serve in the navy. He was sent to Vietnam, and then to Indochina, where France struggled to keep its colonial possessions. Realizing that he could not achieve career growth, Denard rebelled. He knew he deserved more.
Shortly before leaving military service, he was trained in the United States, where he discovered the New World, a more modern, more equal and more prosperous one. Through connections in the United States, Denard got a job as a security guard at an American firm in Morocco. In 1952, he joined the local French police.
In Casablanca, he fell under the influence of right-wing extremist groups and in 1956 was charged with conspiracy to assassinate French Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France. He spent 14 months in prison.
Security guard in Katanga
After his release, Bob Denard returned to France, where for some time he worked as a seller of bathroom accessories, but this activity quickly bored him. In 1961, a comrade showed him an advertisement in a newspaper about the recruitment of employees for the protection of mining enterprises in Katanga. A few weeks later he was already in Congo, wearing the uniform of a paratrooper. Soon he led a motley group of soldiers of fortune from Europe and South Africa, participating in the guerrilla war in the African bush. Here he gained a reputation as a spectacular and fearless leader of mercenaries.
When the attempt to separate the province of Katanga from Congo after the country gained independence from Belgium failed, 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. Soon after, he participated in the Biafra independence war from Nigeria, which ended in defeat, and in the 1970s and early 1980s he worked in Benin, Chad, and Angola (where, he said, he collaborated with the CIA).
Operation Shrimp: Bob Denard in Benin
On Sunday morning, January 16, 1977, he loaded 90 STEN submachine gun mercenaries recruited from newspaper ads onto a DC-7 to seize power in Benin, a small West African state.
Denard's plan was simple. All he had to do was neutralize President Kerek and his supporters by besieging 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 of Cotonou, capturing the international airport and the presidential palace, in which there was no dictator. While the fighting was going on, he calmly left his house and went on the air, confirming that he was alive and urging the citizens of Benin to confront the “monstrous act of imperialist aggression”. As a result, Denard retreated, leaving dead fighters, weapons, equipment and, worst of all, documents detailing the entire plan for seizing power. The returnees only took with them a resident of the capital who responded to the president’s appeal and went out with arms in their hands to defend the sovereignty of the country, but surrendered, stumbling upon Denar’s command. The "hostage" seemed to be glad to leave Benin and his wife himself.
Families of those killed in the attack filed lawsuits in the courts of France and Benin. In his homeland, Denard was sentenced to 5 years in prison, and in the country where he failed, to death.
But he was already beyond the reach of both jurisdictions: a Frenchman, armed to the teeth, at the head of a hired army, headed for a small island state in the Indian Ocean.
Decisive attempt
In the Comoros, Denar succeeded in achieving the greatest success. In 1975, he had already organized a coup d'etat against President Ahmed Abdullah Abdereman.
This time, Bob could not afford to fail. He spent more than a year on the embodiment of this enterprise - the overthrow of President Sualich. Twice planned air operations had to be canceled due to lack of external support. Denard no longer used the location of his "sponsors." But he could not retreat.
After Cotonou, many turned away from Denard, even his first lieutenant called the plan of sea transport from the coast of France to Moroni without intermediate stops at ports madness.
Ahmed Abdullah allocated him a budget of 3 million francs. By the time of planning the third operation, half of 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 two other 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 during his 18 years of service as a mercenary. He even had to lay down his only legitimate business - a car repair shop.
The Messenger of Allah
The coup on May 13, 1978 was perhaps Bob Denard's greatest gamble, because both the enterprise itself and the victory were his personal. He acted alone.
In Lorient, where he purchased and prepared the Antinea deep-sea trawler, Denard spent more than one week personally checking everything until the last rivet of the hull. He surrounded himself with reliable, experienced people, friends, several engineers and a crew that even at sea did not know about the end point of the ship’s route.
Denard became not only a winner, but also a liberator. The population of the islands, each village expressed its gratitude to him. The Muslim population accepted him as the messenger of Allah.
Mercenary king
Bob found a second calling here: he rebuilt the Comoros, reorganized the administration, the police, the courts, and the economy. He thought that he had finally found a second homeland 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, from whom he had two children. He had at least six other children from other marriages. He also converted to Islam and took the name Saeed Mustafa Majub.
Bob Denard, the king of mercenaries, created a logistics base in 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 mysterious circumstances, and Denard, with the help of the French paratroopers, managed to escape to South Africa.
