Bob Denard. Biography and photos of the "King of Mercenaries"

Bob Denard (pictured below in the article) - the legendary French soldier of fortune, who for decades took part in coups d'etat and engaged in mercenarism throughout Africa and the Middle East, died on October 13, 2007, at the 78th year of his life .

About death announced his sister Georgette Garnier. The cause was not reported, but it is known that the "mercenary king" suffered from Alzheimer's disease for several years.

The wrestler with communism

A tall, elegant man who inspired Frederick Forsythe to write a novel about European soldiers of fortune in Africa, The 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 soldier of the West participating in Struggle against communism.

"It's true, I was not a saint," he said in 1993. "It's impossible to fight otherwise." But I would not be here until now, if I did really reprehensible things. "

King's permission

Instead of talking about himself as a mercenary or a pirate, he preferred to be called a corsair. "The corsairs in France received a written permission from the king to attack foreign ships," he explained. "I did not have this permission, but I had passports issued by special services."

Thus, since the early 1960s, he could not afford to refuse to participate in either supporting or overthrowing governments in former European colonies and other conflict zones. Apparently, he had no problems finding conscripts in the underground world of soldiers of fortune.

He and his followers, who boasted of their nickname les Affreux ("Terrible"), 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 also 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.

"Reserve option"

Bob Denard argued that many of his actions were carried out 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 the Comoros in 1995. At another hearing, the question was whether he was in a position to serve this punishment, but Denard had already died.

At the trial, which began in 2006, friends in the government did not forget about him. "When special services are not able to carry out certain types of covert operations, they use parallel structures," a former French intelligence official said at the trial. "Bob Denard was such an option."

France did not betray him. In an interview in 1993, after other officials spoke out in his defense, he said that the rules in this case are such that no contracts are concluded. 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 Bourges in the family of a retired army officer, who later worked in the French colonies, where his son grew up. 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 did not achieve career growth, Denard rose. He knew that he deserved more.

Shortly before retiring from military service, he was trained in the United States, where he discovered the New World, more modern, more equal and more prosperous. With the help of connections in the United States, Denard received the job of 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 accused of participating in a 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 he worked as a seller of bathroom accessories for a while, but he quickly became bored with this occupation. In 1961, the comrade showed him an ad in the newspaper about the recruitment of employees for the protection of mining enterprises in Katanga. A few weeks later, he was already in the Congo, dressed in the shape of a paratrooper. Soon he led a diverse group of soldiers of fortune from Europe and South Africa, participating in the guerrilla war in the African bush. Here he gained the reputation of an effective and fearless leader of mercenaries.

When the attempt to separate the province of Katanga from the Congo after the country gained independence from Belgium ended in failure, he fought in Yemen, where he allegedly worked in close cooperation with British intelligence, as Denar himself claimed.

Bob was wounded in battle and limped for the rest of his life. Shortly thereafter, 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 armed with STEN submachine guns mercenaries recruited from newspaper ads to a DC-7 aircraft to seize power in the small West African state of Benin.

Denard's plan was simple. All he had to do was neutralize President Kerek and his supporters, besieging the capital by 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 an international airport and a presidential palace, in which the dictator was not. While fighting was in progress, he quietly left his home and went on air, confirming that he was alive, and urging the citizens of Benin to resist the "monstrous act of imperialist aggression". As a result, Denard retreated, leaving the dead fighters, weapons, equipment and, worst of all, documents detailing the entire plan for seizing power. Retired people took with them only a resident of the capital, who responded to the call of the president and came out with arms in defense of the sovereignty of the country, but surrendered, having stumbled upon Denard's command. "Hostage", it seems, was glad to leave Benin and his wife.

Families of those killed in the attack filed lawsuits in the courts of France and Benin. At home, Denard was sentenced to 5 years in prison, and in the country where he failed, to death.

But it was already out of the reach of both jurisdictions: an armed to the teeth Frenchman headed by a hired army headed for a small island nation in the Indian Ocean.

The decisive attempt

In the Comoros, Denard managed to achieve the greatest success. In 1975, he already organized a coup against President Ahmed Abdullah Abderman.

This time Bob could not afford to fail. More than a year he spent on the embodiment of this enterprise - the overthrow of President Sualikh. The twice planned air operations had to be canceled because of a lack of external support. Denard no longer enjoyed the location of his "sponsors". But he could not retreat.

After Cotonou, many turned away from Denard, even his first lieutenant called the plan for a sea transfer from the coast of France to Moroni without intermediate stops in the ports of madness.

Ahmed Abdallah allocated him a budget of 3 million francs. By the time the third operation was planned, half the amount had already been spent. Twice he hired a team, twice paid an advance, and then for a contract failure. Abdullah and two other sponsors of the coup could no longer afford further expenses. Denard had only 2 options: either to surrender, or to invest in the operation all his money earned for 18 years of service as a mercenary. He even had to lay down his only legitimate business car repair shop.

The Messenger of Allah

The coup of May 13, 1978 was, perhaps, the greatest adventure of Bob Denard, because both the enterprise itself and the victory were his personal. He acted alone.

In Lorient, where he purchased and prepared the deepwater trawler "Antinea," Denard spent more than one week, personally checking everything up to the last rivet of the hull. He surrounded himself with reliable, experienced people, friends, several engineers and crew, who even at sea did not know about the final point of the ship's route.

Denard became not just a winner, but also a liberator. The population of the islands, each village expressed its gratitude. The Muslim population accepted him as the Messenger of Allah.

King of Mercenaries

Bob found here a second vocation: he rebuilt the Comoros, reorganized the administration, the police, the courts, the economy. He thought that he had finally found a second home 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 more children from other marriages. He also converted to Islam and took the name of Said Mustafa Majub.

Bob Denard, the mercenary king, created a logistics base in the Comoros for military operations in Mozambique and Angola, and also helped France to bypass the embargo imposed on South Africa. But in 1989 Abdullah was killed under unclear circumstances, and Denard with the help of French paratroopers managed to escape to South Africa.

Attempt of revenge

After spending three years in South Africa, he returned to Paris, where he received a suspended sentence for attempting to overthrow the government of Benin in 1977 and was acquitted on charges of organizing Abdullah's assassination. Bob Denard, whose autobiography under the title "The Corsair of the Republic" was already written, was ready to resign.

But in 1995, with a small group, he again returned to the Comoros, but his attempt to seize power failed, and French troops were sent to the archipelago to restore order. This was the last act that Bob Denar, a mercenary, did, for which he eventually had to answer in court more than ten years later. By that time, he was too sick to attend the court sessions and speak for himself.