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Israeli mercenaries in Cameroon

Over the past two decades, Israeli mercenaries have been training the BIR, an elite unit of the Cameroonian army. Their names were mostly kept secret.

The BIR are the special forces of Cameroon, directly accountable to President Paul Biya who has been in power since 1982. They have often been involved in human rights violations.

With Youri Van der Weide, we established the names of two Israelis who provide training services to the BIR.

We found that one of the Israeli mercenaries had bought about $32m of property in New York and Los Angeles and holidays in Bahamas resorts costing $20,000 per night.

The story was published in African Arguments and picked up by other outlets, including in an interview I gave to RFI.