Posted on 04/04/2008 10:00:39 AM PDT by SolidWood
Scandal surrounding special forces: more than 30 police-, Bundeswehr- and GSG-9- officers apparently trained Lybian collegues; in secret and illegally. They allegedly earned hundreds of thousands of Euros with their activities, now the interior minister of Northrine-Westphalia has filed charges.
Düsseldorf - illegal discretionary earnings from Muammar al-Gaddafi: German security officers are facing a volley of reproaches. Without the knowledge of their offices they allegedly flew to Lybia in their free time - to train police officers of the authoritarian regime.
"This behavior is completely unacceptable", the interior minister of Northrhine-Westphalia Ingo Wolf (FDP) said and confirmed that in his state alone 8 officers of the SEK's of Bielefeld, Cologne and Essen are involved in the affair.
Wolf has initiated disciplinary proceedings and is pressing charges against the officers for divulging official secrets and violating their obligation of secrecy.
...snip
According to newspaper reports, members of the German armed forces and the elite border guards GSG-9 are also involved in the scandal. The news agency dpa claims it has information that more than 30 active and former police-, Bundeswehr- and GSG-9 officers conducted training operations in Lybia for their own financial benefit.However, the federal ministry of the interior has denied reports that active-duty officers of the federal elite force GSG9 were involved in the affair.
The newspaper "Westfalen-Blatt" reports that a former GSG9 officer founded a security company and hired the officers of several SEKs on a freelance basis. These officers then trained security forces in Lybia under the umbrella of the company. "They passed on the know-how of the police of NRW to Gaddafis police forces", the newspaper quotes a police officer who is involved in the investigation. For their mission every officer received upto 15.000 Euros - in total the training generated hundreds of thousands of Euros.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
I hate to see this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that these types of affairs tend to tear the guts out of a unit and I fear that Germany and the West will need Germany to have a robust counterterrorism capability in the near future.
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