Serviced in Serbia: The Lethal Crop Duster Destined for War in Libya

Gas Aviation's hangar is located at the small Rudine grass strip airfield in the town of Smederevska Palanka, some 80 kilometres south of the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

It was here that the aircraft maintenance firm, a leader in the region, took delivery of a single-engine crop duster in late summer 2018. There was nothing unusual about it, said Gas Aviation owner Zeljko Ivosevic.

Yet less than three years later, in March 2021, the same plane was pictured in a report published by a United Nations-appointed panel of experts, but with some deadly additions: a 16-57mm Rocket Pod, a 32-57mm Rocket Pod and a gun pod fitted with twin 23mm cannon under its wings.

In 2018, "When it came to us, there was nothing modified on it," Ivosevic, a former pilot, told BIRN in April this year.

But modified it was, and well before its sojourn in Serbia, according to UN investigators who have traced the aircraft to an alleged $80 million scheme by US security contractor Erik Prince to supply weapons to a Libyan militia commander in violation of a decade-long arms embargo.

Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater security firm, goes to appear at a closed meeting of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, USA, 30 November 2017. EPA-EFE/MICHAEL REYNOLDS

Project Opus

The UN arms embargo dates to February 2011, when Muammar Gaddafi was trying to crush a rebellion against his decades-long rule. Gaddafi was killed in October that year, but stability has eluded Libya. For the past seven years, rebel militia commander Khalifa Haftar has been fighting to take control of the country, having already secured its east.

The 77 year-old enjoys the backing of the United Arab Emirates,...