UN probing Canadian lobbying firm’s possible role in Sudanese troop deployment in Libya
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A United Nations panel is investigating whether a Canadian lobbying firm has played a “direct role” in the illegal deployment of about 1,000 Sudanese troops to reinforce a Libyan warlord’s assault on Tripoli.
The Sudanese troops arrived in Libya in July, in defiance of an international arms embargo, according to a new report by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya. It said the troops belonged to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a notorious Sudanese militia that has committed atrocities in Darfur under its former name, the Janjaweed.
The UN panel is trying to find out if the Sudanese troop deployment was linked to a US$6-million contract between Sudan’s former military regime and a Montreal-based lobbying firm, Dickens & Madson (Canada) Inc. The head of the lobbying firm is denying any role in the Sudanese deployment.
The lobbying contract was signed by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the RSF and a senior member of the military regime that seized power in a coup last April. He remains the deputy chairman of Sudan’s ruling sovereignty council today.
The 376-page report by the UN Panel of Experts, submitted to the UN Security Council on Nov. 29, contains no statement clearing the company of wrongdoing. It says the investigators sent a letter to Dickens & Madson and that the company responded.
