Robert Denard (7 April 1929 – 13 October 2007) was a French mercenary. He served as the de facto military leader of the Comoros twice with him first serving from 13 May 1978 to 15 December 1989 and again briefly from 28 September to 5 October in 1995. Sometimes known under the aliases Gilbert Bourgeaud and Saïd Mustapha Mhadjou, he was known for having performed various jobs in support of Françafrique—France's sphere of influence in its former colonies in Africa—for Jacques Foccart, co-ordinator of President Charles de Gaulle's African policy.

Having served with the French Navy in the Algerian War, the ardently anti-communist Denard took part in the Katanga secession effort in the 1960s and subsequently operated in many African countries including Congo, Angola, Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), and Gabon. Between 1975 and 1995, he participated in four coup attempts 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. Denard served as a colonial policeman in Morocco from 1952 to 1957. He worked as a demonstrator for washing machines in Paris. 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 from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, and served 14 months in prison. An adamant anti-communist, Denard then took part in many anti-colonialist conflicts, simultaneously on his own behalf and on that of the French state. Once he was freed from jail, he worked for the French secret services during the war in Algeria. From June 1965 he had the Polish mercenary commander Rafał Gan-Ganowicz under his orders on a one-year contract during the quelling of the Simba rebellion. Denard then supported an attempted secessionist revolt on behalf of Tshombe by Katangan separatists in July 1966.

A year later Denard sided with Katangan separatists and Belgian mercenaries led by Jean Schramme and Jerry Puren in a revolt in eastern Congo to restore Moise Tshombe to power known as the Mercenaries Revolt. The rebels were soon 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.

Denard was involved in 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 (, or Operation Shrimp), against Mathieu Kérékou, the president of the People's Republic of Benin, in 1977. Although Jacques Foccart denied 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 returned to the Comoros with 43 men on 13 May 1978 and carried out a coup against president Ali Soilih, who had turned toward socialist policies. Soilih was killed under mysterious circumstances on 29 May 1978. The official story that Soilih was "shot while trying to escape" is not generally believed. Helped by Denard, Ahmed Abdallah took the presidency back. For eleven years (1978 to 1989),

Denard then waited in the Médoc 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 26 November 1989. But a few days before the trial, Abdallah's family dropped their suit, and finally Denard and Dominique Malacrino were acquitted because of lack of evidence.

Afterwards, president Mohamed Taki Abdulkarim declared that he refused Denard's return to the Comoros.

1995 coup and subsequent trial

On the night of 27 September 1995 Denard launched a fourth coup Operation Kaskari, in the Comoros. Denard landed on the Comoros with 33 men in Zodiac inflatable boats in an attempted coup against president Said Mohamed Djohar, Abdallah's successor. On 4 October, in accordance with an agreement between France and the Comoros, the French army put an end to the attempt. The French government sent an expeditionary force to capture Denard and his mercenaries. Despite having over 300 armed Comorians ready to fight and having machine gun posts set up, Denard surrendered without a shot being fired. Denard was brought back to France by the French DGSE intelligence agency and spent ten months in a Paris jail. At his trial a number of former Gaullist politicians, including Charles Pasqua, spoke on his behalf.

Later trials and death

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 launch a coup against Colonel Azali Assoumani, the current president, also opposed to his return to the Comoros.

On 9 March 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, 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 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 9 March, 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. However, he never served his sentence for health reasons. In 2011, his story was the basis of the film Mister Bob.

Religious beliefs

Born a Catholic, Denard converted to Judaism in Morocco, then to Islam in the Comoros, and finally back to Catholicism. His funeral took place at the Paris church of Saint-François Xavier.

See also

  • History of Comoros

References

Bibliography

  • Samantha Weinberg: Last of the pirates; in search of Bob Denard. London, 1994.
  • Christopher Othen: Katanga 1960–63; Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that Waged War on the World. London 2015
  • .
  • Katia Denard, Si on te demande, tu diras que tu ne sais pas, Mon Père, Bob Denard, récit., Anne Carrière, 2011, 217 p.
  • More on the 1995 Azalee Operation
  • More on the 1989 coup (BBC)
  • Africa Comoros mercenary cleared of assassination (19 May 1999) (BBC)
  • Condolence book of Bob Denard (Hungarian)