Erik Prince’s Project Opus Contributes to UAE Libya Arms Embargo Breach
A $80 million deal of the American businessman, Erik Prince, to deliver deadly equipment has frequently hurt the 2011 UN arms embargo in Libya. In the latest chapter, a report by the United Nations talks about one of the most controversial deliveries that Prince attempted to make for the Libyan militia leader, in coordination with the United Arab Emirates, the country where the Blackwater founder lives.
Under the Project Opus proposed to Khalifa Haftar in 2019, a number of aircrafts, helicopters and other military hardware were to be supplied. The UAE was directly linked to these deliveries, where the Emirati firms planned, financed and managed Prince’s project using several shell companies. One of the supplied aircrafts included a single-engine crop duster, which the UN revealed was modified with weapons.
Prince assigned a former fighter pilot from Australia, Christiaan Durrant, for the military upgrade of the aircraft by Prince’s Austria-based front company, Airborne Technologies GmbH. In 2014, LASA Engineering was created to replace Prince’s front company to avoid the restrictive arms export laws of Austria. The ‘agricultural plane’ registered in Bulgaria with LASA Engineering in 2015. It debuted at the Paris Air Show as LASA T-Bird in 2017, where LASA meant Light Attack and Surveillance Aircraft.
The aircraft was sent to maintenance firm, Gas Aviation, in Serbia in August 2018. The company’s owner Zeljko Ivosevic said, “When it came to us, there was nothing modified on it.”
However, Erik Prince’s connections with Serbia are less known, but controversial. The Balkan country’s President Aleksandar Vučić has long maintained close ties with the UAE and Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince. The two sides have been involved in a number of contentious projects together. Close allies of MbZ, Prince and the former security chief of Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, have been purchasing arms from Serbia and ultimately supplying them to Libya. This is why, the report of LASA T-Bird in Serbia prompts several questions.
In June 2019, the aircraft was sold to a UAE-based company, L-6 FZE. The Emirati firm was controlled and managed by Christiaan Durrant, along with a Dubai-based British national, Amanda Kate Perry. On the 27th of the same month, the aircraft flew to Amman in Jordan, the country that supplied military helicopters for Erik Prince’s Project Opus. Reports reveal that LASA T-Bird stayed there until July 11, when Durrant was asked by Jordanian authorities to remove all the assets linked to Opus A.
A UN report in March 2021 revealed pictures of LASA T-Bird, loaded with a gun pod fitted with twin 23mm cannon, a 32–57mm Rocket Pod and a 16–57mm Rocket Pod under its wings. Part of the Project Opus, LASA T-Bird was supposed to be in Libya, but a July 2019 flight plan said it would fly to Larnaca, Cyprus. However, the UN investigators found that Cypriot air traffic control has “no records of the aircraft landing there”.
One of the key characters in the plan, Durrant also said that he was unaware of the whereabouts of LASA T-Bird. While the evidence of the aircraft reaching Libya is not yet revealed, some others successfully reached Haftar and his forces as part of the Project Opus. Erik Prince’s plan actively involved his close business partner Christiaan Durrant, Amanda Kerry and the UAE– assisting in the violation of the UN arms embargo.
Other than LASA T-Bird, a commercial Antonov AN-26 transport aircraft and a Pilatus PC-6 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft were also associated with Emirati firms. Durrant and Kerry were associated to these three firms — L-6 FZE, Lancaster 6 and Opus Capital Asset Limited FZE — mentioned in the UN report. Outside Prince’s project, these UAE-based firms have delivered drones, helicopters, cyber intelligence capabilities and even Western mercenaries to Haftar.
In the past, there has been enough evidence to prove that the UAE has violated the arms embargo, directly or indirectly. Although the country has been portraying its support towards the embargo and the Libyan peace process at the global stage, it continues to breach all the international codes by backing Haftar’s bloody war.
