Africa's most infamous soldier for hire and his armed band surrendered Thursday to French troops who reversed his third coup in the Comoros Islands.
The takeover of the impoverished islands off Africa's east coast failed after France, the former colonial power, sent troops to wrest power from Frenchman Bob Denard on Wednesday.Denard was the first to walk out Thursday from the military barracks that he, two dozen mercenaries and 300 rebel Comorian soldiers had used as a base since deposing the Comorian president one week ago.
He was given a full body search by two French commandos wearing body armor and carrying submachine guns. The commandos, one holding Denard's right bicep, escorted the hobbling, 66-year-old mercenary to a waiting car.
Two of Denard's lieutenants followed him out of the barracks and were placed in separate cars. The three vehicles sped to an abandoned airfield near Moroni's central harbor, and from there Denard boarded a helicopter that flew north, presumably to the Hahaya airfield, 10 miles away, or to one of three French warships offshore.
The rest of his men came out in groups of 10 and were put into minibuses, first the Comorian soldiers, then the rest of the foreign mercenaries.
The mercenaries, dressed in camouflage uniforms, were a combination of older, grizzled veterans and very young men. All were heavily armed with automatic rifles and grenades on their belts.
They were were taken into custody by the French troops who surrounded the barracks after landing Wednesday.
Hours after the French swarmed ashore, Denard freed President Said Mohamed Djohar and announced he was ready to abandon his latest coup attempt.
Denard had negotiated the terms of surrender with French officers until Thursday morning, then called his mercenaries into a private meeting. They emerged tight-lipped to announce they were giving up.
"Today it's raining and today the Comorians are crying," Denard told reporters about an hour before his surrender.
Denard, gray-haired and limping after decades of soldiering, has staged several coups on this dirt-poor chain of islands between Mozambique and Madagascar, which he ruled through figurehead presidents from 1978 to 1989, when France negotiated his departure.
But Wednesday's intervention seemed to mark an end to French tolerance for the buccaneer who has claimed to have served French interests around Africa.
The French had demanded Denard's unconditional surrender and issued an international warrant for his arrest. Prosecutors in France said he had illegally left the country as they probed his role in the 1989 death of another Comorian president, Ahmed Abdallah Abderrahmane.
In a radio broadcast Wednesday, Prime Minister Mohammed Caabi el Yachroutou, who hid out in the French Embassy following the coup, announced an amnesty for all soldiers who supported the uprising.
Djohar, the Comorian president, was taken to the nearby island of Reunion after he was freed.