Franz Josef Jung, Germany's defence minister, has condemned the police commandos' actions [AP]

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said German federal police have confirmed that from 1979 they sent an officer to Libya twice a year "for training reasons".
 
The arrangement was seen as a way "to thank" Gaddafi for urging the Palestine Liberation Organisation to distance itself from Germany's Red Army Faction.
 
The left-wing movement conducted operations against the West German state from the 1970s to 1993, killing 30 people before it disbanded.
 
The newspaper also said that German police had confirmed that a former parachute commander helped to train Libyan forces between 1979 and 1983, with the blessing of the German intelligence service.
 
The report comes ten days after several elite police commandos were suspended after allegations they worked for a private firm training police in Libya to earn extra money in their spare time.
 
The German government subsequently conceded that a private security firm may have trained members of Gadaffi's elite corps, but denied allowing federal police and soldiers to freelance for the group.
 
The report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine at the weekend said that German police also helped to train officials from China and Uzbekistan.

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