France to outlaw mercenaries
2003-02-06 20:42
Paris - The French Senate on Thursday approved a bill making it illegal for residents of France to serve as mercenaries in foreign conflicts, on pain of up to five years in prison and a huge fine.
The bill comes as French mercenaries are reported to be fighting on both sides of the civil war in the west African state of Ivory Coast.
The law, which was voted through unanimously and now goes before the lower house the National Assembly, makes it an offence punishable with a five-year prison term and a €75 000 ($81 000) fine to sell one's services in a foreign conflict.
"This law is a response to the pressing and justified demand of many countries, especially in Africa, to suppress an activity which destabilises their internal equilibrium and turns conflict into a permanent state," said Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie.
"Those concerned by the law will be people specially recruited to that end with a view to obtaining personal advantage or a sizeable remuneration," she said. Both French nationals and foreigners normally resident in France would be subject to the law.
"The international context encourages mercenaries. The scaling down of armies has left many well-trained professionals without a job, and tempted to sell their services to foreign commanders," said Michel Penchat, the senator who proposed the bill.
Pelchat said several French nationals were known to be fighting in Ivory Coasts's four-month-old civil war, but to date nothing could be done to stop them.
France's best known mercenary, 75-year-old Bob Denard - who fought in Belgian Congo, Yemen, Angola, Rhodesia, and the Comoros - was convicted in France in 1977 of organising a coup d'etat in Benin, and in 1999 was acquitted of murdering Comoran president Ahmed Abdallah. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA