...a formerly good idea gone bad...
panel said Monday it had no "credible evidence" of Sudanese paramilitaries fighting in conflict-wracked Libya for military strongman Khalifa Haftar
...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy, so it's kind of hard to describe him as a Qadaffy holdover. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all. Actually, he is, but slowly...as alleged by some media outlets.
Several Libyan and regional media outlets had claimed in recent months that hundreds of Sudanese paramilitaries from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were deployed in Libya to fight alongside Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces. But a UN panel of experts on Sudan dismissed these claims in a report released on Monday.
"The panel has no credible evidence of the presence of Rapid Support Forces in Libya," the report said. It said there were, however, many Arabs from Sudan’s conflict-wracked region of Darfur and neighbouring Chad fighting as "individual mercenaries" in Libya and they belonged to the same tribes that made up a majority of RSF personnel.
The UN experts’ report also said several Darfuri gangs operating in Libya "have participated in various festivities and military operations alongside Libyan warring parties".