Togo - Security Companies

The third security component - in addition to the regular armed forces and the political militias - consists of a dozen security guarding and surveillance companies sharing the security market. All located in Lomé, the main ones are the Agency for Development and Security, Intercom Security, American Eagle Security, Optimal Protection Services, the Togolese Surveillance Company and Togo Métropolitain Security Service and Eurafric Corporation.

It is important to note that apart from Robert Montoya and to some extent Jeannou Lacaze, the military sponsor of the outfit who died in August 2009, all these security companies do not participate in political repression. Fluidity between the various security aspects The three components of the system (FAT, paramilitary militias, security companies) operate in synergy, although they are legally separate bodies. This translates essentially into an extraordinary fluidity in the movement of agents of the armed forces towards the militias and the guard agencies.

Unemployed, small delinquents and soldiers in civilian clothes, coming from the ranks of the regular army and especially the veterans, cohabit in good spirit with the Togolese League of Students and Trainees, the Union of Students of Togo and The Federation of Students and Schools of Togo, and even better within the HACAME, the mother militia, the most representative of these paramilitary militias on which the others have modeled their mode of operation.

Supposed to be dormant, the HACAME continues to sow unrest on the Lomé campus, preventing for example the holding of meetings or breaking strike movements of students mostly unionized on the Student Council of the University of Lomé, attached To its autonomy. The campus is adjacent to the Doumasséssé district (also known as Adewikomé), supposedly home to northern nationals, including Kabyè, who in the early 1990s had distributed weapons and clubs. It is well known that weapons caches exist on campus (the library for example) and that some extremist students are armed.

HACAME's president, Tozim Dandao, dismissed from the university for his repeated failures, was always present, co-organizing regularly with the other militia associations, laudatory motion reading sessions and high-paid paid support marches in honor of the head of the university, State. Like his predecessors promoted to ministerial or ambassadorial positions, such as Pascal Bodjona, appointed by Eyadéma Ambassador in Washington before joining Faure, who was the director of cabinet after having animated his campaign, it was not inopportune to predict Tozim Dandao also had a bright future.

In addition, among the security guarding and surveillance companies, the most connected to political power is the Security Advisory and Service (SAS) based in Togo. They recruit mainly retired soldiers and veterans who want to round off their month-end, and sometimes para-militiamen. Due to the explosion of delinquency and criminality, as well as strong demand from local companies, there has been a growing supply-demand for security, which has imploded this juicy market, a large part of which is attributed to Robert Montoya and the French general Jeannou Lacaze, former military adviser to François Mitterrand and security advisor to General Eyadéma.

Jeannou Lacaze is the collection agent of SAS-Togo, owned by Robert Montoya before creating his own agency, L'Assaut Veille, in 2002, which employs a hundred people. Robert Montoya is a former gendarme of the GIGN (Intervention Group of the national gendarmerie), the Elysée anti-terrorist cell under President F. Mitterrand, who had lived in Africa for about 20 years.

Its SAS International group employed more than 2,500 people in seven Francophone African countries (including Gabon, Zaire de Mobutu, Côte d'Ivoire), whose leaders are familiar to them. SAS International had close ties with Executive Outcomes, the powerful South African mercenary recruitment company. The local branch of SAS International, SAS-Togo, employs 400 security officers and succeeded in removing in 1996 the market for the telephone tapping of some 300 opponents, which must be well over half a thousand b 2010. In the early 1990s, SAS-Togo was headed by Captain Paul Barril who is, like Robert Montoya, A former gendarme, responsible for the GIGN. Their company trains and equips the Band's anti-riot forces: handcuffs, truncheons, tear gas bombs, bullet-proof vests, hoods, etc.

Although SAS-Togo is small in size (approximately 400 employees in 2010) compared to Optimal Protection Services or Intercom Security, which employ more than twice its size (respectively 1,000 and 1,500 employees) Dominant position in relation to its competitors because of its age on the market and above all because of the quality of the links between its promoters and the head of State and his entourage. Robert Montoya is a perfect example of the military-security system: he is very attached to the Bande, the various French-African networks (CIAN, MEDEF, French Ministry of Defense, Freemason circles, etc.).