(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The Peninsula Online
Doha: Qatar's former deputy prime minister H E Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah has accused the United Arab Emirates of recruiting mercenaries from American company Blackwater to invade Qatar before the siege was announced.This was revealed in a report by Spanish newspaper last week.
According to the report thousands of mercenary soldiers from Blackwater - now renamed Academi were trained in the UAE to invade Qatar, but plans did not receive green light from the White House and were abandoned.
According to Al-Attiyah, the invasion plans, led by UAE, began before the announcement of the blockade against Qatar by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and Bahrain, on June 5.
The plan confirms what H H Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Emir of Kuwait, said during his meeting with US President Trump, that he had stopped the blockading countries plan to intervene militarily in Qatar. There were also reports in American media that Trump had talked with UAE and Saudi Arabia to prevent them from taking any military action against Qatar.
Abu Dhabi authorities first hired the services of notorious Blackwater for its operations in Yemen as part of the military alliance led by Saudi.
When mercenaries suffered several military setbacks in Yemen and they abandoned their positions. Later they were recruited to invade Qatar and install a leadership which is docile and subservient to the interests of UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Official sources told the Spanish paper that the training of foreign mercenaries was carried out at the Emirate military base in Liwa, western UAE.
"We estimate that Blackwater trained about 15,000 employees, most of them Colombian and South American," ABC said.
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