33 Facts About Bob Denard

Bob Denard served as the de facto military leader of the Comoros twice with him first serving from 13 May 1978 to 15 December 1989 and again briefly from the 28 September to 5 October in 1995.

Bob Denard was polygamously married seven times, and fathered eight children.

Bob Denard had a swashbuckling, larger-than-life image as the South African journalist Al J Venter called him "a warrior king out of Homer" who achieved the dream of every mercenary by conquering the Comoros in 1978, which he ruled via a puppet president until 1989.

Venter believed Bob Denard to be the most successful of the mercenaries in Africa, and certainly one of the best known.

Bob Denard worked as a demonstrator for washing machines in Paris.

An adamant anti-communist, Bob Denard then took part in many anti-colonialist conflicts, simultaneously on his own behalf and on that of the French state.

Bob Denard began his mercenary career, which was to span three decades, in Katanga, probably in December 1961 when he and other foreign mercenaries were brought in by the leader of the mercenaries in Katanga, Roger Faulques.

Bob Denard fought there until the secessionist movement led by Moise Tshombe collapsed in January 1963.

The French and British sponsored a number of mercenaries to train the royalist volunteers in military techniques, and Bob Denard was among those who joined the Imam al-Badr, leader of the royalists.

Bob Denard served for two years in the Congo battling Simba rebels supporters of the late Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, who had been murdered in Katanga in 1961 after having been overthrown by rival politicians and severely tortured while in transit.

Bob Denard was in charge of his own unit of French mercenaries called.

Bob Denard became famous after rescuing white civilians encircled by rebels in Stanleyville in 1963.

Bob Denard then supported an attempted secessionist revolt on behalf of Tshombe by Katangan separatists in July 1966.

Bob Denard was wounded in the initial rising and flew out with a group of more seriously wounded men to Rhodesia.

Bob Denard was involved in mercenary activity in Biafra during the Nigerian civil war during the late 1960s.

Bob Denard may have been involved in a raid against Guinea in 1970.

Bob Denard was involved in a failed coup attempt in Benin, against Mathieu Kerekou, the president of the People's Republic of Benin, in 1977.

Bob Denard is known to have participated in conflicts in Rhodesia with 7 Independent Company, Rhodesia Regiment in 1977, Iran, Nigeria, Angola, Zaire and the Comoros, the last-named nation having been subject to more than twenty coups d'etat in the past decades.

For most of his career Bob Denard had the quiet backing of France and the French secret service which wished to maintain French influence over its ex-colonies.

Bob Denard was most active in the Comoros, making four separate attempts to overthrow the government of this small island group.

Bob Denard then failed at a coup in Benin in 1977 and carried out some operations in Rhodesia from 1977 to 1978 as part of the Rhodesian Army's short-lived French-speaking unit, 7 Independent Company.

For eleven years, Bob Denard headed Abdallah's 500-strong presidential guard and had strong influence and business interests in the archipelago, marrying and converting to Islam and eventually becoming a citizen of the country.

Bob Denard adopted the Islamic name Said Mustapha Mhadjou upon his conversion.

Bob Denard was then supported by Paris, as the Comoros provided France for a base to get around the embargo imposed on South Africa because of its government's policy of apartheid.

Bob Denard accumulated considerable holdings in the Comoros, composed of hotels, lands, and the presidential guard.

Bob Denard then waited in the Medoc region, in France, for his trial for the murder of president Ahmed Abdallah in 1989.

Bob Denard landed on the Comoros with 33 men in Zodiac inflatable boats in an attempted coup against president Said Mohamed Djohar, Abdallah's successor.

Bob Denard was brought back to France by the French DGSE intelligence agency and spent ten months in a Paris jail.

In 2001, Guido Papalia, Italian attorney of Verona, prosecuted Bob Denard for having tried to recruit mercenaries in the far-right Italian movement in order to make a coup against Colonel Azali Assoumani, the current president, opposed to his return to the Comoros.

Emmanuel Pochet, another suspect, declared that Bob Denard had "support from senior officers of the special forces of the DGSE", the French external intelligence agency.

On 9 March, Bob Denard's lawyer presented declarations by former president Djohar, who had stated, during an interview to Comorian newspaper Kashkazi at the end of October 2005, that his security chief, Captain Rubis, a French officer that the French authorities had recommended to him, "was aware of the coup".

Bob Denard's death was announced by his sister on 14 October 2007.

Bob Denard's funeral took place at the Paris church of Saint-Francois Xavier.