April 14, 2008
German Police Trained Libyans
for Two Decades: Report
Frankfurt
German police have been visiting Libya to train security men for
last two decades, a newspaper claimed Sunday, questioning government
insistence that the training had been unauthorized and of recent
date only.
Berlin has said the police were moonlighting, using vacation to work
in Tripoli for a private training company.
In a report to appear in print Monday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung said Germany's BKA federal police service had confirmed it
began training Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi's bodyguards in 1979,
with an officer travelling to Libya to give courses twice that year.
The newspaper said West Germany, as it then was, cut a deal so that
Gaddafi would lean on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
not to give refuge to Germany's urban terrorists of the time, the
Red Army Faction (RAF).
The payoff was in visits by an experienced German bodyguard, it
said, also quoting ex-army sources who said they were shown a home
video in the mid-1980s of a federal police officer training Libyans.
The paper quoted an officer saying German private firms had provided
training in Libya "continuously for more than 20 years".
The Social Democrat whip in the federal parliament, Peter Struck
said in remarks quoted Sunday that he did not consider it a scandal
to train Libyan police, and it was good to cooperate with the
Libyans against terrorism.
The training was debated in parliament last week. Parliamentary
watchdogs questioned intelligence chiefs, who reportedly said staff
knew of it, but had not thought it significant enough to report to
the government.
An army sergeant and more than two dozen active or former members of
an elite German police unit were confirmed to have conducted
training seminars in Libya between 2005 and 2006.
The government has denied it was aware of the instruction, which
reportedly included how to storm buildings, abseil from helicopters
and board ships.
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