Who Is Marc Garibaldi...
Rizla Ranger UK
LOL inna pseudo French Madagascan accent
Any of y'all who claim to be on the circuit should
be able to give us laff&joke about this one!!
or not
Respec'!
Riz
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The Nation (Nairobi)
June 21, 2002
Mike Mande
A French charter plane carrying 15 French mercenaries on its way to
Madagascar was briefly detained at Dar es Salaam International Airport
(DIA) and forced back to Paris after the French government asked
Tanzania not to allow it to proceed to Madagascar.
A French spokesman exposed the Falcon 900 plane with 15 mercenaries
from Paris who were on their mission to boost militants loyal to
ousted Madagascar President, Didier Ratsiraka.
Reports from Antananarivo said the plane, carrying French mercenaries
recruited by Mr Ratsiraka, was forced to land at DIA for refuelling
and the French authorities asked the Tanzania government to detain the
plane and ordered the group back to Paris.
Senior officials at DIA told the Nation that the plane, carrying 15
passengers, all French nationals had stopped for refuelling on Tuesday
but was told by airport security officials that it did not have
permission to land in the Madagascar capital Antananarivo.
"All passengers were taken to Royal Palm Hotel (formerly Sheraton Dar
es Salaam), while the issue was being sorted out. Then the French
government asked Tanzania to order the plane back to Paris because the
passengers were illegal," said the official.
The French embassy in Dar es Salaam said they were aware that the
plane had landed at DIA but it was not a French government plane.
A senior Madagascar army source, loyal to Mr Marc Ravalomanana, the
new President, said a dozen French mercenaries were on the the
Paris-to-Madagascar flight.
The source further said the mercenaries left Paris on Tuesday led by
the chief mercenary, Mr Marc Garibaldi known in many of Africa's hot
spots.
"He has fought many wars on the continent, he is a dangerous man given
an opportunity he can do anything," said the army official.
The Nation in Dar es Salaam has established an internet reports that
Mr Garibaldi is a former French soldier who has in the past worked as
a gun for hire in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Cote
d'Ivoire.
However, other sources in France said Mr Garibaldi was at his home on
France yesterday.
The Plane had planned to fly on to Toamasina, a port on the east coast
of Madagascar where Mr Ratsiraka, who still regards himself as
president has set up a parallel government. Ratsiraka left Madagascar
for France last week.
According to military and independent sources from Madagascar, the
official flight plan said the aircraft would pick up a delegation of
Ratsiraka associates from Toamasina and take them to Addis Ababa,
where the Organisation of African Unity is due to hold a summit
meeting on Madagascar on Friday.
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Madagascar: Mercenaries foiled
Staff Reporter
PARIS, 20 June 2002
France says it has prevented suspected mercenaries from landing in
Madagascar to try to regain control of the island nation for former
President Didier Ratsiraka.
PARIS: A government spokesman in Paris said Wednesday French and
Tanzanian officials had blocked the mercenaries' aircraft after it
landed in Dar es Salaam to refuel. The plane was forced to head back
to France. Sources in Madagascar said the small Falcon 50 jet was
carrying 12 mercenaries sent to help Ratsiraka return to power.
The French government spokesman said France condemns such actions and
will not allow its territory to be used for these kinds of operation.
The mercenaries were reportedly led by a former French soldier named
Marc Garibaldi, who is now based in West-Central Africa.
A military officer loyal to Madagascar's new president, Marc
Ravalomanana, said the mercenaries would have been killed had they
landed on the island. Madagascar's political crisis began last
December following the presidential elections, which Ravalomanana said
were rigged. Madagascar's Supreme Court declared him the winner after
an election recount in April, but Ratsiraka refused to recognize the
court's ruling.
The political crisis has prevented fuel from reaching many major
cities and has halted the flow of goods around the country. The
Organization of African Unity plans to hold peace talks Friday in
Addis-Ababa in an effort to end the crisis in Madagascar.
(Voice of America News)
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meanwhile, in other news
COLOMBIA
July 29, 2002; A bomb exploded in the capital, killing one civilian.
Another bomb was found, and deactivated, on an airport runway 310
kilometers northeast of the capital. In several clashes, government
forces killed eight rebels.
July 28, 2002; In several clashes, government forces killed eleven
rebels and three soldiers.
July 25, 2002; The US is sending Special Forces troops to train a
brigade of Colombian soldiers to guard oil pipelines.
July 24, 2002; The government uncovered a FARC plot to recruit (for $2
million) a suicide pilot to crash an airplane into the presidential
palace on August 7th inauguration day for the new president. In
central Colombia, a car bomb went off, killing three policemen. FARC
was suspected.
BOSNIA
July 17, 2002; SFOR reports a huge increase in the number of weapons
turned in by Bosnians. The number of grenades and small arms turned
over voluntarily to SFOR has increased 200 percent over last year.
However, everyone knows there are still plenty of weapons spread
throughout Bosnia. SFOR does see the increase in voluntary turn-in as
an indicator that the population is (1) more trusting of international
peacekeepers and (2) less fearful that civil war will once again
erupt.
July 16, 2002; This is a joke, a bad joke. SFOR and western press
sources report that a few Bosnian bank notes are turning up with an
"illegally imprinted...small color portrait" of war criminal Radovan
Karadzic. One Bosnian government spokesman describes the picture as
being very small but Karadzic is "recognizable beyond doubt." SFOR
can't find Karadzic, but his picture's now on the local currency. Bad
guys and bad money appear to go hand in hand.
THE STAN
July 29, 2002; Some 25,000 Pushtuns in northern Afghanistan, who fled
to the Pakistan when the Taliban fell, are refusing to return home.
They fear persecution by non-Pushtun Northern Alliance militias that
control northern Afghanistan. The Taliban brought many of these
Pushtuns north after they took territory from the Northern Alliance in
1999 and 2000. Locals were killed or driven off and their land and
villages given to Pushtuns.
Calls for foreign nations to provide more peacekeepers continue to be
ignored. No one wants to send their soldiers into what is still
considered a volatile and violent situation. The feeling seems to be
that Afghans will have to work out peace deals themselves.
July 27, 2002; Near Khost (144 kilometers southeast of Kabul), 50 US
troops and local Afghans, looking to Taliban and al Qaeda reported to
be in the area, were fired upon from men in a walled compound.
Gunships and reinforcements (another 50 US troops) arrived and in a
4.5 hour battle, five US troops were wounded and two of their Afghan
allies killed. Three enemy troops were killed and one wounded and
captured.
http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/qndguide/
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