Immobilized on the tarmac at Perpignan airport since 2014, the personal plane of the deposed dictator in 2011 could soon return to his country. The final episode of a soap opera combining an Egyptian arbitral tribunal, Air France, and a powerful Kuwaiti conglomerate?
“I could not imagine myself lying on Gaddafi’s bed,” launches a young Libyan smiling, an AK-47 submachine gun in his hand. Even in my dreams! ” August 2011. After six months of a civil war that started with a popular protest movement, the Libyan rebels, insurgents who precipitated the fall of the Gaddafi regime, seized the international airport in Tripoli, the capital. On the tarmac, they discover the personal plane of Muammar al-Gaddafi, who reigned as a dictator over the country for more than forty years before being killed in Sirte in October 2011.
Inside, journalists follow rebels discovering the luxurious device. Flamboyant showers and toilets, XXL bed, leather sofas… The Airbus A340 of the “Guide to the Revolution” symbolizes the excess and the megalomania of a man and a power in agony. A year later, almost to the day, the aircraft registered 5A-ONE lands at Perpignan airport, discreetly, as Le Monde reported in 2015. Riddled with shrapnel and bullets, the plane crossed the Mediterranean in five hours, at low altitude – around 10,000 feet. The transfer was made by a private company, World assets transition (WAT). Airbus is then entrusted by the National Council of the Transition (the political body of the rebellion) to Air France, which subcontracts the delicate good to EAS, an aeronautical maintenance company.
Back to Tripoli?
Nearly ten years of a long judicial soap opera later, the “Gaddafi jet” would be on the verge of regaining Libya, according to France 3 Occitanie. According to a technician from EACS (a Libyan state company now the owner of the aircraft) quoted by the channel, the aircraft could return to Libya “within one to two weeks maximum.” ” The interior of the Airbus is not the” flying palace “that has been described, specifies the Libyan. There have been exaggerations. There is no jacuzzi for example. There is a bed, a sofa, and room to accommodate 76 passengers, including the crew. ”
In February, the specialized site Africa Intelligence had already revealed that the plane was going to fly again. Above all, the refurbished Airbus was photographed on May 3 by a local photographer, Clément Alloing, who posted images of the 5A-ONE on the networks, as well as the flight plan, a loop from Perpignan to Toulouse, while flying over Montpellier, Valence, Montélimar… “It had been a long time since it was repaired,” assures the photographer, who has been observing the intriguing Libyan plane for several years.
Showcase of Gaddafi’s power
The history of the Libyan dictator’s “Air Force One” dates back to the early 1990s. The aircraft was first sold in 1996 to Prince Jefri Bolkiah, brother of the Sultan of Brunei. The man has relations with France: in 1997, the prince of the oil emirate bought the Plaza Athénée, a Parisian palace on avenue Montaigne. The Airbus 5A-ONE will then pass into the hands of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a billionaire businessman, member of the Saudi royal family. It was not until 2006 that Muammar Gaddafi, who has ruled Libya with an iron fist since 1969, bought the device for $ 120 million, according to CNN. It is from this airliner transformed into a flying palace that the “Guide” will land in Orly on December 10, 2007. The dictator is greeted with great pomp by the Minister of the Interior at the time, Michèle Alliot-Marie, before setting up his tent in the gardens of the Elysée.
By acquiring the A340, Gaddafi wanted to make it the showcase of his power. On his cabin, the owner had written “99.9.9.” A reference to the Sirte Declaration, signed in 1999, during which Gaddafi concretized his idea of the African Union, which was to supplant the Organization of African Unity (OAU). A way for the dictator to come out of his isolation on the continent, and to show more and more his political ambitions.
Creditors’ appetites
The Airbus, with its very political taste, is at the heart of the obscure files of Libyan property and assets held in France. After temporarily returning to Libya, in 2013, where it will only be used once by the incumbent Prime Minister, Ali Zeidan, the plane returns to French soil a second time, in 2014. Since then, it has been nailed down. on the tarmac at Perpignan airport. The device is then courted by several creditors of the bankrupt Libyan state, determined to recover their money since the fall of Gaddafi. And in particular by a powerful Kuwaiti conglomerate, Al Kharafi. The reason for the dispute between the two parties? The construction and operation of a huge tourist complex on the shores of the Mediterranean, signed in 2006 between the Libyan state and the conglomerate, but broken up in 2010 by the Libyans.“It was at a time when Gaddafi’s Libya was opening up to the international market ,” slips a source well informed on the matter. It was to be one of the first seaside resorts in Libya. ” Furious, the Kuwaitis then seized an arbitral tribunal in Cairo, Egypt, which ruled in their favor in 2013: a debt of more than 900 million euros was then granted to the conglomerate, paving the way for a seizure of the plane. Bailiffs are then sent to Perpignan.
At that time, Air France also entered the legal ball, considering itself wronged in view of the sums committed to its subcontractor, EAS. The maintenance of the aircraft was estimated in 2016 at more than 3 million euros … All share a common goal: to auction the Airbus, estimated at several tens of millions of euros. But on November 30, 2015, Kuwaitis suffered a setback from French justice: the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) of Perpignan considers that the property belongs to a sovereign nation, Libya, which has immunity from the claims of the Kuwaiti conglomerate. The latter then abandons his views on Airbus, and now focuses on another issue: the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), a Libyan sovereign fund, suspected of harboring the fortune of the “Guide” …
What will become of the Airbus 5A-ONE, while Libya is still under the control of militias, foreign mercenaries, and Erdogan’s auxiliaries? Above all, why is the file unblocking now, after having been seized for several months for a visa story? “Perhaps the French state wants to get into the little papers of the new Libyan government, “ wonders the source cited above. Almost ten years after the death of Gaddafi, the ghosts of the Libyan dictator have not yet revealed all their secrets.
