NAIROBI, Kenya – Erik Prince, the former head of security contractor Blackwater Worldwide and a prominent supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, has violated a United Nations arms embargo against Libya by sending weapons to a military commander who international effort overturned according to UN investigators.
A confidential UN report obtained by The New York Times and delivered to the Security Council by investigators on Thursday reveals how Mr. Prince a force of foreign mercenaries, armed with attack aircraft, gunboats and cyber-weapons capabilities, to eastern Libya at the height of a major battle in 2019.
As part of the operation, which according to the report costs $ 80 million, the mercenaries also planned to form a hit group that could locate and kill selected Libyan commanders.
Prince, a former Navy SEAL and the brother of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education, became a symbol of the overly privatized U.S. military when its Blackwater contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.
In the last decade, he has re-established himself as an executive who trades – sometimes for minerals, other times involving military force – in countries that have been waged war but are rich in resources, mostly in Africa.
During the Trump administration, Mr. Prince a generous donor and a firm ally of the president, often in alliance with figures such as Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, because they were the critics of Mr. Trump wanted to undermine. And Mr. Prince was scrutinized by the Trump-Russia investigation into his 2017 meeting with a Russian banker.
Mr. Prince refused to cooperate with UN inquiry; his lawyer did not respond to questions about the report. Last year, attorney Matthew L. Schwartz told the Times that Prince ‘had nothing to do with military operations in Libya.
The report raises the question of whether Mr. Prince played on his ties with the Trump administration to end the Libyan operation.
It describes how a friend and former partner of Mr. Prince traveled to Jordan to buy surplus, U.S.-manufactured Cobra helicopters from the Jordanian military – according to military experts a sale that would normally require permission from the U.S. government. The friend assured officials in Jordan that he had ‘clearance from all over’ and that the work of his team had been approved ‘at the highest level’.
But the Jordanians, who were not among the allegations, stopped the sale and forced the mercenaries to get new planes from South Africa.
A Western official, who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss confidential work, said investigators also obtained phone records showing that Mr. Prince’s friend and former partner made several calls to the main switchboard in the White House. end of July 2019, after the mercenary got into trouble.
The accusation that Mr. Prince has violated the arms embargo on Libya, exposing himself to possible UN sanctions, including a travel ban and a freeze on his bank accounts and other assets – although such an outcome is uncertain.
Mr. Prince is not the only accused of violating the decade-old arms embargo on Libya. The turbulent interference by regional and world powers has fueled years of fighting, prompting mercenaries and other lucrative entrepreneurs to seek wealth from a war that has brought many deaths and misery to many Libyans.
The vast body of evidence in the latest UN report – 121 pages of code names, cover stories, foreign bank accounts and secret arms transfers spanning eight countries, not to mention a brief appearance by a Hollywood friend of Mr. Prince, offers a glimpse into the secret world of international mercenaries.
Libya began to break down a decade ago, when the violent overthrow of the country’s longtime dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, set in motion a political crisis that shattered the country into armed factions, and eventually was much supported by foreign forces in the hope of shaping the fate of the oil-rich North African nation.
Eastern Libya is now in the hands of Khalifa Hifter, the powerful military commander for whom Mr. Prince reportedly agreed to support as the country was devastated by a battle in 2019.
A one-time CIA asset that after the fall of Mr. Qaddafi returned from exile in Virginia in 2011, Mr. Hifter quickly established himself in the eastern city of Benghazi as an aspiring strongman who was determined to, if necessary, explode his way to power.
In his late 70s, Mr. Hifter has been on the United Arab Emirates for years for funding, armed drones and a range of powerful weapons, according to successive United Nations reports. Recently, Mr. Hifter also received support from Russia, under the guise of mercenaries with the Wagner group linked to the Kremlin, which became an integral part of its war machine.
In April 2019, Mr. Hifter launched a dazzling attack on the capital Tripoli, but huge obstacles got in the way, including newly arrived troops from Turkey supporting the UN-backed government. That is why Mr. Hifter him to mr. Prince used.
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.