French-built Mirage fighter aircraft from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) air force and which are serviced by French companies are suspected of taking part in bombing civilian sites in Libya, where the Gulf state is actively engaged in military support for warlord Khalifa Haftar in his campaign to overthrow the internationally recognised Government of National Accord in Tripoli.
While the aircraft, Dassault’s multi-role Mirage 2000-9 fighter jets, were sold to the UAE in contracts signed in the 1990s, they continue to be maintained and upgraded by Dassault and French defence companies Thales, Novae, AAA and the French arm of the European consortium MBDA, raising serious questions about the compliance of such activities with international law.
A United Nations (UN) embargo on the supply of weapons to Libya was introduced in 2011 by Security Council resolution “1970”, and which was tightened in 2014. While some of the recurrent violations of the embargo have been the subject of sanctions, others have not.
UAE Mirage-2000 fighter jets have been in action over Libya for several years, notably operating out of Egypt in support of renegade Libyan general Khalifa Haftar, leader of the Libyan National Army, which controls large swathes of eastern Libya in opposition to the Tripoli-based and UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In an interview with the The Wall Street Journal published in September this year, UAE foreign affairs minister Anwar Gargash declared: “In Libya, we don’t work alone. We work in tandem with the Egyptians, with the French, with other countries.”
France, although officially recognising the NGA, has for some while secretly supported Haftar who, after wresting control of Libya’s second city Benghazi from Islamists in 2017, launched a military offensive against the NGA in Tripoli early last year, and which has now resulted in a stalemate.
In this report, coordinated by Dutch online investigative media platform Lighthouse Reports and produced in collaboration with French-German broadcaster Arte, Mediapart investigates the blurred lines of the after-sales services provided by French companies – with the agreement of the authorities – to foreign armed forces engaged in armed conflicts denounced by the international community and subject to UN Security Council resolutions.
These are activities largely unknown to the public and which are integral to arms deals signed by France and its weapons industry with wealthy state clients, as is the case for other arms exporters. Often secret, maintenance and training operations are an essential part of arms sales abroad, without which the increasingly sophisticated equipment, in the air, on the ground or at sea, cannot function.
In Libya, general Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) also enjoy the military support of Egypt, another major client of France’s defence industry; in February 2015, Cairo inked a deal with Paris, estimated to be worth 5.2 billion euros, for the sale of 24 Dassault-built Rafale fighter jets and air-to-air and air-to-ground missile weaponry, and also a frigate. At the end of May 2017, several Egyptian air force Rafale aircraft attacked the port city of Derna, in eastern Libya, and the inland town of Hun, further west, in support of Haftar’s forces, as reported in detail by Mediapart last September.
In December 2019, the UN’s Panel of Experts on Libya published a report of its investigations into the fierce combat last year following the launch of the LNA offensive against the GNA. The events studied by the panel included an air attack on July 2nd 2019 upon a migrant detention centre situated in the outlying eastern Tripoli district of Tajoura, and close to a compound of a pro-GNA militia, the Dahman brigade.
The GNA had reported that at least 53 migrants died and another 130 were wounded in the attack, which was initially claimed by the LNA. The UN report, which described the attack as a violation of international humanitarian laws, did not specifically identify the aircraft responsible, or its provenance, but the details of the precision-guided missile attack suggested that it was a UAE Mirage fighter jet.
The panel concluded that LNA forces had “deliberately planned and directed two air strikes on the Dhaman military compound on 2 July 2019 that resulted in civilian fatalities and casualties” and that a UN member state “deliberately executed at least two air strikes, on the Dhaman military compound on 2 July 2019 that resulted in civilian fatalities and casualties”.
“The Panel is unconvinced that the HAF [editor’s note, Haftar Armed Forces] and the Member State respected principles in relation to proportionality in this incident,” the report added. “If precautionary measures were taken, they were largely inadequate and ineffective.”
Just a few days before the UN report was made public, and while some of its conclusions about the attack that struck the internment camp in Tajoura were leaked in the international media, a deal worth several hundred million euros was signed between the UAE and French defence firms Dassault, Thales and MBDA for the upgrading of the Gulf state’s fleet of Mirage 2000-9s.
While none of the French firms involved in the upgrading and maintenance of the Mirage aircraft responded to questions submitted to them by Mediapart, the French government, which authorises such activities by issuing necessary licences to the firms, did reply to Mediapart, when it insisted that such activities did not contradict “the respect of its international engagements”.
Regarding the UN Security Council embargo on arms trading with Libya, the French prime minister’s office said that, “These measures apply uniquely to the supply of arms and to activities of training and assistance either for or from Libya”, adding that “activities of the same nature for the benefit of other states are therefore not concerned by the sanctions scheme”.
“Consequentially, the contracts concluded between French companies and the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates do not enter into the framework of resolution 1970,” said the prime minister’s office in its statement to Mediapart. It said that the licences issued by the government to companies for maintenance contracts “detail the country in which the operations will be carried out”.
“Resultingly, the support operations for the Emirati M2000s [Mirage jets] involving French industrial firms are exclusively carried out within the United Arab Emirates,” it added (see the reply by the French prime minister’s office in full, in French, here).
Does that in itself absolve the French government and firms from any responsibility regarding the use of the aircraft in Libya? For Frédéric Mégret, a law professor specialised in international and humanitarian law at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, the issue is blurred. “One could say that to repair the landing gear of a plane which might, moreover, be used in Libya is not the same thing as selling a plane to Libya itself,” he said. “But in reality, it’s very difficult to draw a line between the two.”
“As of the moment that the United Arab Emirates provide support to some factions in Libya, which is air support, military support – which is not only symbolic but implies the use of these weapons systems – there is an obligation of due diligence upon these companies operating in states that are fully tied by the embargo regarding the use of these weapons,” Mégret added.
A red line 'which has perhaps already been crossed'
Frédéric Mégret argues that there is a “real chain of responsibility” which “leads from certain Libyan regions where the Mirages were deployed all the way to the French state”.
“Dassault doesn’t necessarily know everything,” he added. “It’s difficult to follow the use of all these weapons systems. But one should be careful, seek information, not bury one’s head in the sand, follow up concordant, recurrent evidence.”
There is certainly no lack of evidence regarding the involvement over recent years of the UAE fighter jets in the Libya conflict. Using publicly available satellite pictures, Mediapart has established the presence on several occasions between 2019-2020 of its Mirage 2000-9 aircraft at the military base at the town of Sidi Barrani, in Egypt, which lies at about 90 kilometres from the Libyan border. The jets are painted in the light grey camouflage as used by UAE planes.
The satellite picture below of the Sidi Barrani base was taken on August 31st 2019:
Enlargement : Illustration 2
This other satellite picture below of the Sidi Barrani base was taken on May 5th 2020:
Enlargement : Illustration 3
In August this year, the BBC’s “Africa Eye” current affairs programme broadcast an investigation into evidence the UAE supplied and operated drones in Libya, and notably one which carried out a deadly attack in January on young cadets in Tripoli during the siege of the capital by Khalifa Haftar’s LNA forces. As part of the investigation, the BBC found that the Sidi Barrani base was “also the destination for multiple cargo planes that took off from the UAE, suggesting an air bridge for equipment or supplies”.
According to a confidential UN report submitted to its Security Council in August this year, and cited by The Wall Street Journal, the UAE operated around 150 cargo plane flights to deliver military supplies for the LNA between January and April 2020, including numerous landings at Sidi Barrani. The UN report, which based its findings on flight records and aerial pictures of the Egyptian base, said vehicles and planes subsequently transported the military equipment into Libya.
Meanwhile, the UAE Mirage fighter jets are also suspected of operating from bases within Libya. The UN’s Panel of Experts on Libya report of last December, in the section dedicated to its investigation of the July 2019 attack on the migrant internment camp at Tajoura, noted that the panel had received “independent evidence from a reliable confidential source that “an unknown number of Mirage 2000-9 fighter ground attack (FGA) were using Al Khadim airbase, and Jufra as operating bases at that time”. The two airbases are located, respectively, in eastern and north-central Libya.
Frédéric Mégret sees a dilemma over whether such reports should prompt the French companies involved in maintenance work on the UAE jets to halt their operations: “There is of course a complication behind all that. As of the moment that one has extremely large industrial contracts involving a lot of planes, what proportionate measure, for example, should Dassault take? Should one entirely pull out of these support and maintenance contracts, on the basis that one cannot know what part of the fleet will be used in the violation of the embargo, or should this be targeted? In any case, there’s a case for concern, and quite simply rules to respect.”
Over recent months, the European Union has issued sanctions against entities and individuals, notably from Turkey, who are suspected of human rights abuses in Libya and violation of the arms embargo imposed on the country (see more here). Hannah Neumann is a Member of the European Parliament from Germany’s Alliance 90/The Greens party, and is the chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for the Arab Peninsular and also vice-chair of its Subcommittee on Human Rights. “Increasingly when we call for an arms embargo we include the call to stop all maintenance supply contracts,” she said. Meanwhile, the French treasury last month released a document detailing the sanction measures and their practical application.
“It seems to me to be unthinkable that France can have a foreign policy at the Security Council on the one hand and a commercial and military policy on the other which contradict each other,” said Frédéric Mégret. “There is a job to be done in warning French companies involved in weapons sales abroad. There are potentially also sanctions to be taken if one is faced with persistent violations which cannot be excused by insufficient knowledge. We arrive very close to a red line which has perhaps already been crossed.”
The fact that the French firms involved in the UAE maintenance contracts failed to respond to questions submitted to them for this report points to an opacity in their dealings with the Gulf state. On November 18th last year, at the Dubai Airshow – and ten days before the publication of the UN Panel of Experts on Libya report cited above – a contract was signed with Dassault for the upgrading of the UAE’s Mirage 2000-9 fleet (the conclusion of negotiations announced at the airshow two years earlier), when additional, related contracts were signed with MBDA France and Thales.
According to a report by the specialist aeronautics and defence news website DefenseAerospace, the contract with MBDA France was reported by the Emirates News Agency (WAM) as being “to provide maintenance of ammunitions for Mirage 2000 aircraft”. The website added that “the size of the contract suggests that it could include the upgrade of the Mirage weapons package, such as the modernization of both versions (radar and infra-red guidance) of the MICA air-to-air missile, the Black Shaheen cruise missile as well as the procurement of other weapons”. Thales International Middle East, it reported, was contracted “to provide maintenance and life extension services for Mirage 2000 aircraft containers for a value of AED 232.6 million ($63.3 million)”.
Mediapart estimates the total sum of the contracts signed with the French firms last November amounts to around 784 million euros, placing the UAE as the second most important client, by contract value, for the French arms export market in 2019.
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- The French version of this report can be found here.