Cyprus: US Agents Checking Aircraft Cited in Libya War Report

US federal agents are in Cyprus inspecting a Thrush agricultural aircraft modified to carry weapons, Cypriot police said on Wednesday, suggesting continuing international interest in the aircraft believed by UN experts to have been obtained two years ago to play a role in Libya’s war.

The plane (YU-TSH), which the UN believes has been modified to carry weapons, has been parked in a hangar at a Cyprus airport since 2019. It appears to be a LASA T-Bird, a Thrush 510G agricultural aircraft converted for ISR duties.

Cyprus' transport ministry released identification codes that match one of three aircraft listed in a March 2021 UN report by independent sanctions monitors concerning the Libyan crisis in an emailed answer to Reuters inquiry about the plane.

In 2019, the report included claims of Blackwater founder Erik Prince planning a private military operation in support of Libya's then-eastern-backed commander Khalifa Haftar.

Prince has dismissed any suggestions that he was ever involved in any Libyan operations.

UN weapons inspectors stated the Project Opus plan had to be scrapped in June 2019 when Haftar was dissatisfied with the helicopters that had been bought for the mission.

Since the 2011 uprising that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and drew in foreign powers, Libya has been wracked by bloodshed between opposing factions. Following the failure of Haftar's 14-month offensive against Tripoli, a UN-backed truce was struck last year.

According to a police official in Cyprus, US federal authorities inspected the plane on Tuesday in coordination with the UN.

According to the UN report from March 2021, Cyprus first told the global body that it had no record of the plane landing there in July 2019. It was owing to incorrect identifying codes given on by the United Nations, according to two officials from the transport ministry.

Its position in Cyprus was later clarified in subsequent communications with the UN, according to one of them.

“It is being kept securely in storage at Paphos airport,” a transport ministry official said. It has not left the island since it arrived in 2019, the official added.

Storage fees appear to be paid by a foreign corporation.