Washington - The Polisario Front defies NATO coalition by sending mercenaries to fight for Gadhafi to quash Libyans who oppose his regime, former US Ambassador Edward M. Gabriel said
Rabat – “The Polisario Front, which touts itself as a human rights champion (…) is letting its members take up arms against U.S.-allied NATO forces, in defiance of the U.N. Security Council mandate,” Ambassador Gabriel wrote in an article published Monday in the congressional newspaper The Hill.
“In Libya, terrorism has a different, yet disturbing face, where hired mercenaries are terrorizing the Libyan opposition,” he said, adding that Senior NATO officials have received information that the Libyan regime “is spending millions to hire mercenaries from the Polisario Front.”
“Credible sources report that hundreds of Polisario mercenaries are being paid $10,000 each by Gadhafi to cross Algeria into Libya to fight NATO-led forces and kill Libyan protesters and rebels,” he went on to say.
Moreover, Gabriel underlined that “Libyan rebel leaders charged Algeria with backing Gadhafi and turning a blind eye to mercenaries crossing into Libya,” adding that a leader of the National Transitional Council affirmed “that Algerian planes have been used to fly mercenaries to fight Libyan rebels.”
He recalled that The Africa News Agency in London reported that “500 combat-equipped light trucks have been sent to Libya from Algeria.”
“If the details about mercenaries received by NATO officials are accurate, both the leadership of the Polisario and Algerian authorities stand complicit in Gadhafi’s efforts to reinforce his mercenary army,” Gabriel said.
“It is inconceivable that hundreds of Polisario mercenaries could be hired in the first place, or travel more than 1,000 miles from the isolated, Polisario-run camps in southwestern Algeria, without the tacit, if not explicit, support of Polisario and Algerian leaders,” he insisted.
Source: Maghreb Arab Press
