How an Australian Top Gun allegedly ended up running a secret mercenary operation to help a Libyan warlord.
When Christiaan Durrant was four years old his father strapped him to his back and launched them both from an ocean cliff in a homemade hang glider fashioned from tarpaulin, electrical tubes and aluminium piping.
"I'd started to lose a bit of faith … I just felt there was a lot of politics getting involved and senior bureaucrats getting involved that was eroding the force from what it was asked to do — to defend the country. And I couldn't work in that environment — it clashed too much with my own personality," he recalled in an interview with ABC radio.
Four Corners can reveal that the United Nations is investigating Durrant's alleged role — and that of two other Australian military men — in the Libyan operation. The UN alleges the mission breached an arms embargo designed to stop the violence that has plagued the Middle Eastern nation since the overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
According to the UN, which has gathered 140 pages of damning evidence across two ground-breaking reports, it was designed to provide military support to General Khalifa Haftar, who controls the self-styled Libyan Arab Armed Forces, which has been fighting for years to overthrow the country's recognised government.
In cold, business-like language the PowerPoint pitched a plan for armed helicopters and a team of Western ex-military men who would act as Haftar's special forces.It also included a hit list of nine Libyans the Opus team was apparently offering to kill or kidnap for Haftar.The document is full of US military terms for targeted killings and kidnappings.
He was also there to take receipt of two Cobra attack helicopters and five "Little Bird" special forces helicopters from the Jordanian military, which was selling them on the open market, according to UN investigators. Within days the Jordanian Armed Forces headquarters cancelled the sale of the attack helicopters and the departure clearances for the planes and men that were about to deploy to Libya, the UN found.
The 20 men were paid about $US80,000 each for what was to be a three-month job. In the end, they only lasted a few days in the war-torn nation. It became clear to the mercenaries that the plan was falling apart. Several nights later, fearing for their safety, they drove to a Benghazi dock and fled on two inflatable boats.
Durrant declined an interview but told Four Corners in a statement that neither he nor the men that went into Libya were involved in providing military support to Haftar. UN investigators assert that Durrant was one of the organisers of the operation and has breached the UN arms embargo.
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