Private Firm Flouts UN Embargo in Somalia

[Jacaylbaro]

Eight months after SA-linked private military company Saracen International was fingered in a UN Security Council as the “most egregious threat” to peace and security in the failed state of Somalia, Saracen continues to run and train a private army in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

 

Saracen, one of a cluster of shadowy private military contractors born from the ashes of the SA/British mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes, after nearly 18 months of military activity in the region, has yet to secure permission to operate as a security provider in a region so volatile Somalia has not had a functioning central government for upwards of 20 years.

 

Tlali Tlali, the spokesman for the National Conventional Arms Control Committee, confirmed that neither the SA arm of the Saracen operation, nor any of the individuals associated with the Somali adventure had applied for accreditation as legitimate security contractors.

 

UN Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG) co-ordinator Matthew Bryden confirmed the company had failed to seek or secure authorisation from the international authority to operate as a private military contractor in Somalia after being fingered in the Monitoring Group’s June 2011 report.

 

 

FULL REPORT

[Somalia]

Some of those “alternate objectives” could be highlighted in a letter dated 6 December 2010 and addressed to the UN by the

“president” of the Galmudug region

of fractured Somalia. Here reference is made to a

“massacre” of “innocent nomads” carried out by Puntland security forces

explicitly identified as having been armed and trained by Saracen.

In one of a series of actions conducted by troops in armoured vehicles equipped with heavy weapons, the Galmudug leader says 35 people were killed, and 46 wounded, many of the casualties inflicted on women and children.

 

 

Lying

 

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