Time in Canada up for Gaddafi bodyguard

Gary Peters accused of crimes against humanity

TORONTO • The private security contractor who bodyguarded Saadi Gaddafi during the 2011 Libyan revolution was to be deported to Australia on Thursday night after he was deemed complicit in crimes against humanity.

Gary Peters was scheduled to be escorted onto the 8:20 p.m. Air Canada flight to Sydney, according to a letter he received this week. He was to be accompanied by several Canada Border Services Agency officers.

His departure had been expected since Jan. 29, when the Immigration and Refugee Board issued a deportation order on the grounds he was complicit in the abuses the Gaddafi regime committed during its last months in power.

“It is what it is,” Mr. Peters told the National Post in an interview before his departure. “I’m a bit pissed off about it but what can you do? I think they already had their mind made up before it went to hearing.”

Mr. Peters, 49, is an Australian who moved to Canada in 2002 and became a permanent resident in 2008.

He lived in Cambridge, Ont., and was president of the private security company CSI-International Inc.

When revolution broke out in eastern Libya in February 2011, Mr. Peters was hired to serve as Mr. Gaddafi’s personal bodyguard, the CBSA alleged. “Trouble was stirring,” he testified at his deportation hearing in January.

Over the next six months, Mr. Peters kept Mr. Gaddafi out of harm’s way as he tried to quell the rebellion and when it proved unstoppable, escorted him across the desert to exile in Niger, according to the CBSA.

In addition to guarding Mr. Gaddafi, Mr. Peters was linked to a senior SNC-Lavalin executive accused of funneling $160-million in bribes to the dictator’s son in exchange for construction contracts in Libya.

He also took part in an aborted plan to move Mr. Gaddafi to Mexico as the Libyan regime was collapsing. Four people, including an SNCLavalin contractor, were later arrested in Mexico City on charges they had conspired to smuggle Mr. Gaddafi into the country.

But Mr. Peters maintained he had played no role in Libyan atrocities. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” he told the Post this week. He said he intended to live in his hometown of Brisbane until he was allowed back to Canada. “I’m looking forward to coming back,” he said.

Mr. Peters first came to public attention in the fall of 2011, when the National Post revealed his ties to Mr. Gaddafi and SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal-based engineering and construction firm that won hundreds of millions worth of construction contracts in Libya.

The CBSA subsequently took aim at Mr. Peters, arguing at two days of hearings in January that he was complicit in the abuses committed by the Gaddafi regime and, as a non-Canadian, he should be deported.

In its ruling, the Refugee Board described how Mr. Peters first met Mr. Gaddafi in Australia. At the time, Mr. Peters was a soldier providing security to dignitaries visiting the Sydney Olympics, the Board said.

When Mr. Gaddafi subsequently visited Canada on several occasions to meet SNC-Lavalin executives, study English and host a Toronto International Film Festival party, he hired Mr. Peters as his bodyguard.

In February 2011, Mr. Peters travelled to Libya and accompanied Mr. Gaddafi as he addressed public rallies, tried to put down anti-regime unrest and met with senior members of his father’s government, the IRB said. For his services, Mr. Peters was paid tens of thousands of dollars.

He testified before the Refugee Board that he had also looked into bringing Mr. Gaddafi to Mexico. “There was a plan to try to get him to Mexico legally and I left that to another one of my clients, ex-client, who contacted some people in San Diego,” he said.

But he said he abandoned the scheme when he discovered it could not be done legally. He said Mr. Gaddafi was concerned about jeopardizing his ability to travel and wanted everything done properly. Both the RCMP and IRB called Mr. Peters a credible witness.

The Refugee Board ruled that Mr. Peters was effectively a “member of the government apparatus” and was therefore culpable for the regime’s atrocities. It also ruled he had committed a transnational crime when he helped Mr. Gaddafi escape to Niger.

“I’m satisfied that your role as a personal security guard of Al-Saadi Gaddafi while he was acting as his father’s agent, participating in meetings, going to barracks to speak to the soldiers and representing the government before the people of Libya rends you as a member of the government apparatus given your closeness to the regime and the fact that your role facilitated the work of the government — work that, in large part, involved the campaign against the civilian population of Libya,” IRB member Alicia Seifert wrote.

Mr. Peters said the CBSA had advised him Australian authorities might question him after he landed in Sydney on Saturday morning. “No doubt they’ll want their questions answered, obviously, but I won’t be arrested, nothing like that,” he said.