A second scheme to bring him to a property near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, was also planned but Mr. Peters told the Post last week it was scrubbed in June because the necessary travel documents could not be legally obtained from the Mexican government.
Tyler Anderson/National Post
10 Navy Wharf Cr.
An associate of Mr. Peters, Cynthia Vanier, was arrested in Mexico City a month ago. Mexican authorities have not charged her, but they have detained her for being the alleged ringleader of a plot to smuggle Mr. Gaddafi and his family to Mexico using false documents.
Mr. Peters said while Ms. Vanier was involved in the Mexico operation, it was all being done legally. Her family says the mother of two and mediation consultant from Mount Forest, Ont., is innocent or is being used by others.
The allegations of fleeing to Mexico have overshadowed Mr. Gaddafi’s ties to Canada. “He loves Canada,” Mr. Peters told the Post in an interview in October. “That’s why he keeps coming back here every year. He’s got investments here, he’s got property here.”
Mr. Gaddafi fled to Niger in September. The government there has granted him asylum and says it will not hand him over to Libya, which wants to try him for alleged abuses he committed while he headed the Libyan Football Federation. He is wanted on an Interpol warrant but has denied any wrongdoing.
Residents of the condo tower were stunned to hear the high-profile playboy and late dictator’s son could have lived among them. Showed a photo of Mr. Gaddafi, they said they had not seen him around the building.
Ryan Singh, who has lived there since 2005, was intrigued but not surprised. “They probably own places all over the world,” he said. Added Golnaz Tajewdin, a resident for some two years: “It may be a surprise that he has a unit in this building, but I’m not surprised he has an apartment in Toronto.” Another resident, who gave only his first name, David, also expressed little shock. “I mean, it’s an investment, right,” he said. A 26-year-old resident who declined to give her name said if she were as rich as the Gaddafis, she would have bought a more luxurious home. “They should just seize the unit if it was bought with funds against human rights.”
The National Post’s Stewart Bell also reported exclusively on the plot to smuggle the Libyan dictator’s third son Saadi Gaddafi into Mexico.(Saadi has since fled to Niger.)
Below, in chronological order, Stewart Bell’s complete coverage of the story.
The Ontario man who helped Muammar Gaddafi’s son flee Libya
October 29, 2011: A private security contractor and former soldier from Canada admitted he helped Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi flee Libya in September as Tripoli was falling to anti-Gaddafi rebels.
Gary Peters, president of Can/Aus Security & Investigations International Inc. in Cambridge, Ont., was also Saadi Gaddafi’s longtime bodyguard and admitted he was part of a team that drove the late dictator’s third son across Libya’s southern border to Niger.
The convoy was ambushed after it had crossed back into Libya and Mr. Peters was shot. He returned to Toronto’s Pearson airport in September, bleeding heavily from an untreated bullet wound to his left shoulder.
(In response to the piece, members of Canada’s Libya community called on the federal government to launch an investigation into whether the Ontario-based private security consultant broke international laws and sanctions.)
Bodyguard sought help with Gaddafi son’s escape; Ontario man offered to pay contractors $1,000 a day
October 31, 2011:
Gary Peters was offering $1,000 a day to security contractors who would help extract Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi to the Caribbean earlier this year, a source told Bell.
The source said that after the start of NATO air strikes in Libya, the head of a Cambridge, Ont.-based security company tried to assemble a team to transport Saadi Gaddafi to Barbados or Venezuela.
Canadian with ties to Libya arrested in Mexico
November 10, 2011: Cynthia Vanier, a Canadian who led a fact-finding mission to Libya last summer, is arrested in Mexico. (On December 7, Mexican authorities announced Ms. Vanier was the accused ringleader of a plot that included opening fake bank accounts and acquiring various properties in Mexico that would act as safe houses for the Gaddafi kin.)
The jailed consultant, the Gaddafi bodyguard and the Canadian engineering giant
November 29, 2011: During the final weeks of the anti-Gaddafi revolution in Libya, an Ontario consultant who specializes in mediating First Nations disputes assembled a small team to travel to Tripoli for a 10-day, fact-finding mission.
Cynthia Vanier of Vanier Consulting hired a private jet from Veritas Worldwide Security, a San Diego-based company that advertises, among other services, “clandestine operations,” “armed combat” and provision of weapons.
While Ms. Vanier has declined to disclose who paid for the dangerous and costly expedition (Veritas said its contract alone was worth more than US$80,000), the National Post has learned SNC-Lavalin hired the firm, although the company said it was unaware Gary Peters, a former Australian soldier from Ontario who was working as a bodyguard for the Gaddafi family, was involved.
Fact-finding mission led to pro-Gaddafi report; Libya mission consultant hired by SNC Lavalin
The report of a privately-funded Canadian fact-finding mission that traveled to Libya last summer as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was clinging to power was one-sided and reflected a view of the conflict that the regime was actively promoting, according to those familiar with its contents.
The Vanier Consulting study was impartially titled “Fact Finding Report — Mission Date July 17, 2011-July 26, 2011,” but several people who have seen it called it pro-Gaddafi and said it claimed NATO forces and Libyan rebels had committed atrocities and war crimes.
Sun, celebrities & Saadi; A Gaddafi’s lost Mexican refuge; Dictator’s son planned escape to luxurious home in trendy Punta Mita
December 7, 2011: After Libyans turned against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in February, his playboy son Saadi made plans to flee to a Mexican beach resort whose celebrity visitors include Kim Kardashian, Charlie Sheen and Lady Gaga.
Although the United Nations had frozen Saadi Gaddafi’s assets and banned him from crossing borders because of his close ties to the Libyan dictatorship, a multi-million-dollar refuge awaited him in Punta Mita, a posh development near Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s Pacific Coast.
To get him there, a Canadian company, Can/Aust Security and Investigations International, approached private security contractors in Ontario, offering $1,000-a-day to join the team that would pick up the 38-year-old Gaddafi and fly him, his wife and children out of Libya.
Montreal firm covered security for Saadi Gaddafi’s 2008 visit to Canada
December 7, 2011: The Montreal engineering and construction company SNC-Lavalin footed the bill for Saadi Gaddafi’s private security team when the Libyan dictator’s son spent three months in Canada in 2008.
Asked why it had paid for Gaddafi’s Garda security contract, SNC-Lavalin spokeswoman Leslie Quinton responded, “For certain diplomatic guests, we provide complete hospitality and other services as needed.”
December 8, 2011: After a career of working in First Nations communities such as Ipperwash and Attawapiskat, mediating conflicts over land and resources, Cynthia Vanier ventured overseas last summer and waded into the conflict in Libya.
“She’s very kind,” said Mahmod Razwan, a Libyan-Canadian who accompanied her on her visit to wartime Tripoli. “She cries when she sees certain people getting hurt and she’s really genuine when she talks to people.”
But on Wednesday, Mexican authorities offered a less humanitarian view of Ms. Vanier, naming her as the suspected ringleader of a plot to smuggle Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s playboy son Saadi to Mexico using fraudulent travel documents.
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Note: One suite in the samed bulding
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